Phnom Penh is quickly growing, however its development has come at a excessive value to villagers who depend upon the well being of the Mekong River. Filmmaker Andy Ball follows two households — one dwelling on a wetlands on the outskirts of the capital and the opposite dwelling on the Mekong’s banks 20 miles upstream — who’ve had their lives torn aside by sand mining.
The federal government helps sand mining, however Cambodian and British researchers have discovered that miners are taking about thrice the quantity of sand reported by the federal government. Ball’s sources requested anonymity, and their faces are usually not proven; in Cambodia, these talking out towards environmental harms have been jailed and even killed.
“Misplaced Lands” was commissioned by the College of Southampton’s Shifting Sands Venture, which is measuring the components that drive water and sediment dynamics within the Mekong River basin. Sand mining isn’t the one risk confronted by the Mekong: large hydropower dams and local weather change are additionally impacting the river. Says Ball, “We’d like this movie to offer viewers the prospect to think about the fragile steadiness between fast improvement and its trade-offs; how can we greatest steadiness the connection between the 2?”
In regards to the Filmmaker: Andy Ball is a British documentary filmmaker based mostly in Cambodia. He has a background in marine biology and covers tales that revolve across the intersection of human society and the surroundings. He has labored on documentaries for the BBC, CBS, and Enterprise Insider.
In regards to the Contest: Now in its tenth yr, the Yale Surroundings 360 Movie Contest honors the most effective environmental documentaries, with the intention of recognizing work that has not beforehand been extensively seen. This yr we obtained 582 submissions from 76 nations throughout six continents, with the winners chosen by Pulitzer Prize-winning creator Elizabeth Kolbert, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Thomas Lennon, and e360’s government editor Roger Cohn.