Phnom Penh is quickly growing, however its progress has come at a excessive price to villagers who rely 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 will not be 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 Undertaking, which is measuring the elements that drive water and sediment dynamics within the Mekong River basin. Sand mining isn’t the one risk confronted by the Mekong: huge hydropower dams and local weather change are additionally impacting the river. Says Ball, “We’d like this movie to provide viewers the possibility to contemplate the fragile stability between fast growth and its trade-offs; how can we finest stability the connection between the 2?”
Concerning the Filmmaker: Andy Ball is a British documentary filmmaker primarily based in Cambodia. He has a background in marine biology and covers tales that revolve across the intersection of human society and the setting. He has labored on documentaries for the BBC, CBS, and Enterprise Insider.
Concerning the Contest: Now in its tenth yr, the Yale Surroundings 360 Movie Contest honors the most effective environmental documentaries, with the purpose of recognizing work that has not beforehand been broadly seen. This yr we obtained 582 submissions from 76 international locations throughout six continents, with the winners chosen by Pulitzer Prize-winning creator Elizabeth Kolbert, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Thomas Lennon, and e360’s govt editor Roger Cohn.