Social inequality is a theme that people around the world are familiar with. Ivan Marković (From Tomorrow on, I Will), a director and cinematographer born in Belgrade, Serbia, who lives in Berlin, now takes us into the world of luxury homes and inequality in Cambodia in Promised Spaces (Obećani prostori).
The film, Marković’s fiction feature directorial debut, world premieres in ACID, the Cannes Film Festival sidebar run by France’s association of film directors whose goal is promoting the theatrical distribution of independent films, on Saturday, May 16, followed by an “official screening” on Monday, May 18.
Promised Spaces is a contemplative hybrid documentary-fiction film that is a France-Germany-Serbia-Cambodia co-production, which explores urban speculation and the construction of luxury homes in Cambodia, as well as the meaning of home.
Vollak Kong, Chea Loch, Vita Vong, Lyer Von, Theara Or and Kanitha Tith feature in the cast. Written, directed, and edited by Ivan Marković and featuring sound design by Luka Barajević, the film was produced by Bocalupo Films, in co-production with Fiskultura Films, Big Time Production and Anti-Archive. Luminalia is handling international sales.
“Sleepless from the heat, Sokun leaves his crowded construction dormitory and joins a community of fellow workers living in one of many unfinished high-rises,” reads a synopsis. “One such tower offers a long-awaited luxury home for its first tenant, Seda, who soon feels trapped in the vast gated complex.”
And the ACID website says about Promised Spaces: “A ghost town rises in the middle of the Cambodian countryside. Gated communities, new buildings, suspended construction sites, and recent ruins compose a space in flux, inhabited silently by construction workers, a wandering old man, housekeepers, gardeners, and secretaries. At night, the trees, the jungle, the river, and stories of the past…”
Or as ACID general delegate Pauline Ginot puts it: “It shows us how urban landscapes are also political landscapes where class relations come in concrete form.”
Marković, in a director’s statement, explains his inspiration this way: “Promised Spaces explores how architecture embodies social segregation, isolating people across class divides. Merging fiction with real locations and non-actors, the film follows characters from different social strata – construction workers and residents of luxurious gated communities – to show Cambodia’s rapidly expanding urban landscapes. Through fragments of contradicting yet coexisting realities, it traces how speculative urban growth reshapes identities, communities, and notions of home.”
THR can now premiere an exclusive trailer for the film. Get ready to travel to Cambodia and dive into a world that you most likely don’t know. The sneak peek gives you a first taste of the cinematic visuals, the sounds and the overall atmosphere that Marković conjures up. A former fishing village has become the site of modern buildings and construction.
Check out the view and, of course, the trailer for Promised Spaces below.
