Khmerica

Pitch

Joker, Kookie, and Sokha are "Khmericans": Cambodian refugees who grew up in the United States and were deported to Cambodia after serving prison sentences. We follow this trio in their daily lives as they reunite with their new Khmer families, navigating between the remnants of their past lives and a future yet to be built. "Showing the reality of exile means venturing into the in-between: this ambiguous space where Khmericans live, suspended between the United States and Cambodia. Khmerica refers to this transitional state—geographic, psychological, and related to identity—where nothing is stable, where everyone tries to redefine what 'being at home' can still mean. Torn from their American lives, Joker, Kookie, and Sokha find themselves thrust into a country whose language and customs they don't know." Cambodia, supposedly their homeland, becomes for them both an anchor and a territory of strangeness. In this shifting in-between, each of our three characters inhabits the fracture in their own way.