“I look at the sky, high above the hori­zon. It smiles at me with its beauty. I’m close to you. You ask if we are meant for each other” – with this frag­ment of the lul­laby the story of Israeli Ilan, who lives in Cam­bodia with his Khmer woman and her daugh­ters begins. At the same time, those poetic lyr­ics intro­duce us to the world that is both immersed in dreams and burdened with an oppress­ive secret.

Ilan, the prot­ag­on­ist of „Phnom Penh Lul­laby” dir­ec­ted by Paweł Kloc, left Israel many years ago. As he admit­ted, there were many reas­ons for that. For a long time he was unem­ployed in his home­land, and found him­self in con­stant struggle to live a nor­mal life without fear of war and a strain that polit­ical situ­ation put on people’s life. If you can­not suc­ceed in one place, you can always change it – he says. And it seems that this is the main reason that influ­enced Ilan’s decis­sion – the search of a bet­ter place to live. Has he found it in fact? Does he feel „at home” in new, Cam­bod­ian real­ity?


Paweł Kloc’s film shows that Cam­bodia is not heaven on earth, nor even its nook. Here life goes on at a dirty, littered street – where people live on the pave­ments, sleep on the ground and struggle to make ends meet. In this for­got­ten land everything happenes at night – isn’t it easier to hide some­thing that goes bey­ond mor­al­ity and eth­ics once the night falls? Drugs, alco­hol and pros­ti­tu­tion dom­in­ate on each of the nar­row, dark streets of Phnom Penh. Beau­ti­ful, nearly naked young women, often still adoles­cent girls, are strolling up the streets attract­ing new cli­ents. Thanks to mater­ial recor­ded at the hid­den cam­era we are whit­ness­ing a shock­ing pro­pos­istion – 100 dol­lars for a very young one, do you fancy a 13 year old of 10 year old?.


This is the set­ting where we come to meet Ilan. He works as a street for­tune teller pre­dict­ing future that he reads through tarot. Everth­ing he knows, he learned from the old woman he met in Thai­l­and, who noticed he was gif­ted to for­tell the future. Ilan earns a liv­ing by read­ing old, shabby cards, that no one exept him­self can sense. He can see the future of his cli­ents but can he reach his future as well and reveal the secret of his des­tiny?


We found Ilan as a man who not only stands in front of the mis­tery of the future but also reveals mis­ter­ies kept in secret by the past. We do not know what happened in protagonist’s life, why did he come to Cam­bodia and what made him start his com­plic­ated rela­tion­ship with the Khmer woman. And even though we are closely whit­ness­ing their intim­ate talks, still we are left with more ques­tions than answers. Ilan gradualy but very frag­ment­ar­ily unveils facts from his partner’s Saran life – how many chil­dren does she have and what where the reas­ons why some of were left behind or died…


Paweł Kloc’s doc­u­ment­ary is dom­in­ated by the atmo­sphere of mis­tery, as each prot­ag­on­ist – Ilan, Saran, their chil­dren, girl met on the street, tour­ist from Lon­don ask­ing for a fortune-​telling – hides a secret and at any price they try to keep it for them­selves. The dir­ector did not con­fine him­self to emphas­iz­ing only this pecu­liar inclin­a­tion, typ­ical of every human being. Equally import­ant atten­tion is payed to the energy com­ing from dreams. Each prot­ag­on­ist is driven by unsat­is­fied desire of hap­pi­ness, love and accept­ance – con­sidered val­ues that every­one, with no exep­tions is entitled to, but as Ilan says – pain and suf­fer­ing – this is our life.


In one of the last scenes clos­ing the film, Ilan and Saran, due to fin­an­cial reas­ons, give away one of the daugh­ters to the sub­ti­tute fam­ily. A litte girl starts her life with new par­ents while our prot­ag­on­ists stay on the street and watch their child being taken from them. All of the sud­den we notice that in one of the build­ings behind them the lights turn on. Is this a sign that also their life might be changed…