White Building

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White Building

2023

1h 30m

Drama

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Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

95%

Tomatometer

19 Reviews

Popcornmeter

Fewer than 50 Ratings

20-year-old Samnang and two of his friends live in the White Building, a landmark tenement in Phnom Penh. In this fast-changing city, the three boys practice their dance routine dreaming of television talent contests while their parents lead a more traditional lifestyle. But the White Building is to be demolished. Samnang observes his father unsuccessfully attempting to bring together his divided neighbors on the government's compensation offers for residents to move out, and he must face his best friend's departure from Cambodia. Samnang finds that the stable environment he has always called home is on shaky ground.

Robert Abele

Los Angeles Times

06/15/2023

...beautiful feature debut, an urban elegy about what’s thick in the air when the home one has always known is not long for the world.

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Richard Brody

The New Yorker

05/21/2023

The movie seems lived-in; its virtually tactile details and its trenchantly analytical dialogue feel like intimate aspects of the filmmaker’s audiovisual, emotional, and intellectual experience.

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Austin Considine

New York Times

05/18/2023

The film’s loose plotting and secondary character development can leave a few too many hanging threads, but its sense of place is so palpable you can almost smell the smoky city markets, the sweat, the hormones.

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Kelly Vance

East Bay Express

09/21/2023

The images give Neang’s cityscape a tinge of doomed romanticism.

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Dennis Harvey

48 Hills

09/19/2023

...it’s a graceful first feature with a poetical sense of loss that lingers after the final credit crawl...

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Stephanie Bunbury

Deadline Hollywood Daily

09/16/2023

Neang shows a remarkable confidence as a first-time feature director in conveying, through expertly timed silences and pauses, the tension seething below the smooth surface of things.

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Neang Kavich

Director

Piseth Chhun

Samnang

Soem Chinnaro

Ah Kha

Tho Sovann

Tol

Jany Min

Kanha

Hout Sithorn

Samnang's Father

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Synopsis

20-year-old Samnang and two of his friends live in the White Building, a landmark tenement in Phnom Penh. In this fast-changing city, the three boys practice their dance routine dreaming of television talent contests while their parents lead a more traditional lifestyle. But the White Building is to be demolished. Samnang observes his father unsuccessfully attempting to bring together his divided neighbors on the government's compensation offers for residents to move out, and he must face his best friend's departure from Cambodia. Samnang finds that the stable environment he has always called home is on shaky ground.

Director: Neang Kavich
Producer: Davy Chou, Marine Arrighi de Casanova
Screenwriter: Neang Kavich, Daniel Mattes
Distributor: KimStim
Production Co: CNC Aide aux cinémas du monde - Institut Français, Anti-Archive, Doha Film Institute, Kongchak Pictures, Xstream Pictures, Apsara Films
Genre: Drama
Original Language: Khmer
Release Date (Theaters): May 19, 2023, Limited
Runtime: 1h 30m

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