RITHY PANH presents CAMBODIA / FRANCE /62/52 MIN. - 16/9 - STEREO. a film by guillaume suon

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2 RITHY PANH presents THE STORM MAKERS a film by guillaume suon CAMBODIA / FRANCE /62/52 MIN. - 16/9 - STEREO PRODUCED BY RITHY PANH AND JULIEN ROUMY A BOPHANA PRODUCTION / TIPASA PRODUCTION CO-PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH ARTE FRANCE - LA LUCARNE AND AMERICAN DOCUMENTARY POV Contact: Julien Roumy +33 (0) / julien.roumy@tipasaproduction.com

3 At the age of 16, Aya, a young Cambodian peasant, was sold into slavery by a Storm Maker - a human trafficker who promised her a job as a maid in Malaysia. Now back in village, she is just as poor as when she left. Dishonoured and traumatised, what is left of her humanity? The unveiling of Aya s fate, intertwined with the testimonies of human traffickers, offers an unsettling view of contemporary Cambodian society. By revealing the cruel exploitation of the rural population, the film raises an unsettling question: what is the price of a young peasant s life in Cambodia?

4 SYNOPSIS I should have died over there, says 20-year-old Aya. At the age of 16, Aya was sold to work as a maid in Malaysia, where she was exploited and beaten during two years without receiving any salary. Now that she has returned to Cambodia just as poor as when she left, what is left of her humanity? What are her plans for the future, doing odd jobs and surviving on with one dollar a day, while she has to cope alone with the violence of two years of enslavements? In her remote village, youngsters have all migrated to work abroad. Only empty houses are left behind. Cambodians call places like Aya s village the ghost towns. In Cambodia, human trafficking is a booming business. In just a few years, Cambodia became a major supplier of lowcost labour. According to the UN, more than 200,000 Cambodians have been sold off to work in Thailand, Malaysia or Taiwan, in factories or, as domestic servants, or in the commercial sex industry. Cambodians have a name for those who participate in the trade of young peasants like Aya: Mey Kechol, the Storm Makers. Such is the case of 52-year-old Pou Houy. He owns a recruitment agency based in Phnom Penh, and claims to have sold more than 500 girls. He has no shame in admitting that he never cared about what happened to them and that he s only interested in profit. Although Pou Houy s company stands accused by local media to participate in the human trafficking business in Cambodia, he has never been investigated by the police. He continues to recruit young, poor and rural peasants to migrate abroad. Pou Houy also recruits new Mey Kechol, extending his network in to the remote rural areas. Ming Dy, 50, sold her own daughter to Pou Houy, and has brought him more girls from her village. She justifies this by claiming that it is the only way to pay back her debts... How far will one go for profit? What is the price of a life in a country experiencing uninhibited economic development? The Storm Makers explores the damages human trafficking has brought to Cambodia at on the individual, social and economic levels. The film intimately captures the stories of three Cambodians: two human traffickers and a victim. It highlights the consequences of the trafficking business on their individual fates and shows how their humanity ends trapped by this invisible plague.

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6 DIRECTOR S STATEMENT FILMING FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF I intended to give a broad overview of the Aya does not dare to speak to anyone I want migrants like Aya to feel free in front TRAFFICKERS trafficking business while zooming in on about her traumatic experience. Her of the camera, allowing words to serve as the individuals involved in the process of participation in the film is a way of finding a therapy and an escape from the past: Would you sell your neighbour, or even selling human beings. some sense of closure to what happened to speaking to cure and to free themselves. your own child, to a trafficking network in order to save your family? Which one of your children would you sacrifice? How would you feel when you realise that the people you have recruited are being enslaved, exploited, and beaten because of you? What becomes of your humanity once you decide to exploit another human being for profit? The film offers a rare political perspective on the economic, social and ethical crisis that has disturbed Cambodia dramatically. It reveals a shocking perspective on the relentless exploitation of the rural population to feed Cambodia s hunger for economic development. How can a country come to lose sight so much of its own values? How can Cambodians accept bargaining with her in Malaysia. How can Aya continue to live when the memory of the violence she experienced during two years of slavery haunts her every single day? Cambodian migrants have been reduced to the status of slaves. They exist only through the images of poverty and decline provided by the media. They are transparent, or worse, completely invisible. These are the first questions I asked to myself when I started to film the traffickers. I wanted to understand what kind of persons they were. My purpose was neither to judge them nor to reduce their responsibility. I wanted to focus on the personal reasons that led them to sell human beings. I wanted to give the audience the opportunity to delve into traffickers daily lives. Therefore I filmed them face to face, with the idea that the more we get into their minds, the more we can understand their motives and actions. the lives of their own relatives? How did contemporary Cambodian society become so entrenched in greed and profit? In this era of globalisation, I want to show that - to quote the Nobel Prize-winning economist Gérard Debreu - the right to life cannot always be assured, for reasons of cost. FILMING THE VICTIMS IN THE MIRROR OF THEIR TRAFFICKERS I wanted to free the young migrants of their Nobody asks them about their experiences abroad, neither the villagers nor their own families. Shame prevents them from fighting back. They remain silent about the abuse they have suffered: the rapes, the beatings, the humiliation and insults, the exploitation. They have to recover alone, and in silence. Back home, the psychological shock can be so important that some of them give in completely. Several girls have committed suicide; others have gone mad. Others would even migrate again, sometimes only a few days after their return, in a sort of The raw - and sometimes cruel - vision the status of merchandise, to which they have suicidal mission. They are trapped into a Storm Makers have of their victims offers been reduced by the traffickers, giving dual exile: slaves abroad, silent victims at a unique perspective on the place that them the possibility to speak out and tell home. migrant girls hold in Cambodian society. their own stories in details.

7 GUILLAUME SUON Guillaume Suon is a French-Cambodian filmmaker, who has focused his first documentary films on Cambodia s history and contemporary society. Trained by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Rithy Panh, Guillaume Suon is an alumnus of the Berlinale Talent Campus and a fellow of the Sundance Institute and the IDFAcademy. FILMOGRAPHY The Last Refuge (2013, 65, documentary film) Aung San Suu Kyi Award for ASEAN Films, HRHDIFF 2013 ; Best SEA Documentary Award, Freedom Film Fest 2014 Official selections: Amiens International Film Festival 2013, FIFDH 2014 Red Wedding (2012, 58, documentary film) Award for Best Mid-Length Documentary, IDFA 2012 ; Golden Award, Aljazeera International Documentary Film Festival 2013 ; Jury Prize, Gdansk DocFilm Festival 2013 ; Special Jury Prize, HRHDIFF 2013 ; Best SEA Human Rights Film Award, Freedom Film Fest 2013 Official selections: RIDM 2013, DocLisboa 2013, FIFDH 2013, Mumbai Film Festival About My Father (2010, 52, documentary film) Broadcast on TV5 Monde Jury Prize, FEMI 2011 ; Jury Prize, FICIP 2013 ; Runner-up, World TV Awards 2011 Official selections: FIPA 2010, Amiens International Film Festival 2010, Doc in Tunis World Cinema Delegation / Festival de Cannes

8 PRODUCTION RITHY PANH / BOPHANA PRODUCTION Rithy Panh is an acclaimed Cambodian filmmaker, whose documentary films have focused on the aftermath of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime and were rewarded with many prestigious awards (S-21, the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine ; Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell ; The Missing Picture). In 2006, Rithy Panh created Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center to preserve the Cambodian audiovisual heritage. He subsequently trained young Cambodian filmmakers, whose documentary films he produces through the company Bophana Production. Since 1993, Bophana Production has produced numerous internationally acclaimed films: The Sea Wall (2008), Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell (2011) and The Missing Picture (2013), by Rithy Panh ; Same Same but Different (2009), by Detlev Buck ; Golden Slumbers (2011), by Davy Chou ; Le temps des aveux (2014), by Régis Wargnier. JULIEN ROUMY / TIPASA PRODUCTION Julien Roumy is a young French producer who has been trained by acclaimed documentary filmmakers Raymond Depardon and Rithy Panh. Tipasa Production aims at fostering the emergence of new talents in social documentary filmmaking worldwide. The company has worked with the French-Cambodian filmmaker Guillaume Suon and produced Red Wedding (2012), The Last Refuge (2013) and The Storm Makers (2014).

9 TV BROADCAST OFFICIAL SELECTIONS 10 Feb 2015 ARTE France La Lucarne (France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Luxembourg) 31 Aug 2015 PBS POV (U.S.A.) Upcoming Upcoming Upcoming Upcoming Upcoming DR (Denmark) VRT (Flanders, Belgium) RSI (Switzerland) Phoenix (Germany) Channel NewsAsia (Singapore) 2-11 Oct 2014 Busan International Film Festival (Busan, South Korea) Nov 2014 IDFA (Amsterdam, Netherlands) 27 Nov - 3 Dec 2014 Cinemondo - Villa Medici (Roma, Italy) Feb 2015 Human Rights Human Wrongs (Oslo, Norway) Feb 2015 Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema (Vesoul, France) 27 Feb - 8 Mar 2015 FIFDH (Geneva, Switzerland) 26 Feb - 5 Mar 2015 FrauenFilmTage (Vienna, Austria) Mar 2015 Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (Thessaloniki, Greece) Mar 2015 Millenium Documentary Film Festival (Brussels, Belgium) Mar 2015 Movies that Matter Film Festival (The Hague, Netherlands) AWARDS Busan International Film Festival 2014 Mecenat Award for Best Asian Documentary Film Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2015 Inspiration Award Milan s Festival of African, Asian and Latin American Cinema 2015 Windows on the World Prize for the Best Feature Film Salaya International Documentary Film Festival 2015 Special Mention Award Mar 2015 Salaya International Documentary Film Festival (Salaya, Thailand) 9-12 Apr 2015 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (Durham, U.S.A.) Apr 2015 San Sebastián Human Rights Film Festival (San Sebastián, Spain) 4-10 May 2015 Festival of African, Asian and Latin American Cinema (Milan, Italy) 7-17 May 2015 DOK.fest (Munich, Germany) 8-17 May 2015 Docs Against Gravity Film Festival (Warsaw, Poland) May 2015 Festival international du film documentaire en Cévennes (France) 5-10 Jun 2015 Sheffield Doc/Fest (Great Britain) 8-14 Jun 2015 Granada Cines del Sur Film Festival (Spain) Jun 2015 Addis International Film Festival (AIFF) (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) Jun 2015 AFI Docs (Washington, U.S.A.)

10 SPECIFICATION SHEET DIRECTOR & SCREENWRITER CO-WRITER & ASSISTANT DIRECTOR IMAGE SOUND VIDEO EDITING SOUND MIXING ORIGINAL SCORE PRODUCERS EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF WITH THE SUPPORT OF GUILLAUME SUON PHALLY NGOEUM GUILLAUME SUON PHALLY NGOEUM BARBARA BOSSUET GABRIEL MATHÉ MARC MARDER RITHY PANH JULIEN ROUMY SIMON KILMURRY (POV) JEAN TSIEN BOPHANA PRODUCTION TIPASA PRODUCTION ARTE FRANCE LA LUCARNE AMERICAN DOCUMENTARY POV CENTRE NATIONAL DU CINÉMA ET DE L IMAGE ANIMÉE RÉGION MIDI-PYRENÉES FONDS FRANCOPHONE DE PRODUCTION AUDIOVISUELLE DU SUD GUCCI TRIBECA DOCUMENTARY FUND SUNDANCE INSTITUTE DOCUMENTARY FILM PROGRAM IDFA BERTHA FUND WORLDVIEW BUSAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (AND) CAMBODIA FILM COMMISSION BOPHANA AUDIOVISUAL RESOURCE CENTER