Paper Cannot Wrap Ember / Le papier ne peut pas envelopper la braise (2007) dir. Rithy Panh

In an unfinished apartment building in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, prostitutes talk about their lives: their miserable wages, their madam’s cut for “protecting“ them, the abortions they have to pay for themselves and the beatings they endure from their customers. They try to find warmth and security by huddling together and sharing their experiences. To numb their pain, they smoke yama, a synthetic mix of caffeine and methamphetamine. They dream of a rich older man who will take them away, and someone always knows someone who knows someone else whom that happened to, but it certainly doesn’t happen to them. Returning to the rural areas where most of them came from is impossible, for they are bound to their madam in a stranglehold and first must resolve their debts to her. The faces are emotionless, and there is no message here. The restraint with which the film captures modern slavery in the Cambodian sex industry makes the women’s stories all the more poignant.