Organization

Cambodia Town Film Festival

The Cambodia Town Film Festival is an annual festival of Cambodian cinema, held in Long Beach, California, since 2013.[1] AsAmNews has described it as the first and still the only film festival in the United States devoted to the work of Cambodian creators around the world.[1] The musician and writer praCh Ly and the filmmaker Caylee So, a U.S. military veteran, staged the first festival at the Art Theatre. The theater is a single-screen art deco cinema on 4th Street's Retro Row, just southeast of Cambodia Town.[1] Its screenings range from narrative features and documentaries to short, student and animated films, and it gives emerging filmmakers a place to show their work.[2]

History

The festival was planned for Cambodia Town, the center of Khmer culture in Long Beach.[2] For praCh Ly the work was personal: "it's not just showing movies, it's rebuilding our culture and our community."[1] At the first festival he watched three generations of one family in the audience. The children began asking about their grandparents, and the family started to cry and embrace.[1] The first festival, on September 14 and 15, 2013, opened with Kalyanee Mam's documentary A River Changes Course and a performance by the Khmer Arts Academy. On its second day it screened Ly Bun Yim's 1972 film Orn Ey Srey Orn.[3][4]

The second festival, on September 6 and 7, 2014, brought the actor Matt Dillon for a question-and-answer session and screened a classic Khmer film.[5][6] The 2015 festival, held from September 3 to 6, marked forty years since the Killing Fields.[7] The fourth festival followed from September 1 to 4, 2016.[8] From 2014 to 2018 the mayors of Long Beach, Bob Foster and then Robert Garcia, issued a proclamation honoring each festival.[9][10]

The fifth festival, from September 14 to 17, 2017, opened with First They Killed My Father, followed by a question-and-answer session with Loung Ung, who wrote the memoir it adapts and co-wrote the screenplay. The same weekend the festival staged The Khmers of Comedy, which it billed as the first Cambodian American stand-up comedy show.[11] The sixth festival, on September 15 and 16, 2018, added Letters from Home, a live show written and performed by Kalean Ung, and a 25th-anniversary screening of The Joy Luck Club.[12][10] The seventh, on September 14 and 15, 2019, honored the director Ly Bun Yim with a lifetime achievement award and screened a high-definition restoration of his Puthisen Neang Kongrey (12 Sisters), which the festival described as unseen for more than forty years. By 2019 Angelina Jolie was the festival's ambassador.[4]

In 2020 the eighth festival moved online and streamed more than forty films free of charge from September 16 to 20.[13] Screenings stayed online in 2021. The pandemic and the Hollywood writers' strike then kept the festival out of its theater for two years.[1] In 2023 praCh Ly was an international guest at the first Kampung Film Festival on Koh Sdach (King's Island) in Cambodia, a three-day program of six films organized through the Anti-Archive film collective.[14]

The festival returned to the Art Theatre for its tenth edition on September 14 and 15, 2024, in the theater's centennial year, with thirty short, feature and documentary films.[1][15] The eleventh festival, from September 12 to 14, 2025, remembered fifty years since the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975 and began the genocide that lasted until 1979.[16] Its films told stories of artifact smuggling, of cultural traditions and of the Cambodian American experience.[17]

2026 festival

About fifty filmmakers, organizers and guests pose on the Art Theatre stage in front of the screen, many holding red roses, above rows of empty seats.
Closing night of the 12th annual Cambodia Town Film Festival at the Art Theatre, Long Beach, September 13, 2026.

The twelfth festival took the theme "Reflections of Time." It opened with a Kick-Off Party at Sophy's Cambodia Town Food and Music on the evening of September 11, 2026, and continued at the Art Theatre through September 13.[18][19][20] The co-founders closed the festival with a message that began, "Art remains one of the most powerful forces for preserving culture, understanding, and truth," and ended, "Art is Legacy."[18]

2026 award winners
  • Best Feature Film: The Old Man
  • Best Short Narrative Film: Homecoming Waves
  • Best Feature Documentary: Broken Courage
  • Best Short Documentary: Next Up: Lin Sun

Programs

Alongside its screenings, the festival holds panels with directors, producers, writers and actors.[2] In 2024, with support from the RuMBa Foundation of Long Beach, it offered free tickets to students in the Long Beach Unified School District, to college students and to seniors, and served lunch each day to the community's elders.[1]

The 2025 program added a writers' panel, "Beyond Trauma Narratives: Modern Khmer American Writing," with the authors Sanary Phen, Samphors Chhun and Pichchenda Bao, moderated by Christine Su.[16] It also brought a virtual-reality film, Stay Alive My Son by Victoria Bousis, to the Ice House Arts Complex, and a session introducing the Reconnecting Cambodia Project, a DNA-based service that reunites families.[16][17] The hosts of the podcasts Death in Cambodia and OG Yolk moderated some of that year's panels.[16]

Awards

Films by edition

Features and documentaries screened at the festival, by year.

2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2024
2025
2026

Program books

The festival's printed program for each year gives the full schedule, including short films, panels, performances and guests.

Venue

The festival's home is the Art Theatre at 2025 East 4th Street, a single-screen art deco cinema opened in 1925 and one of the last independent theaters in Long Beach.[18][1] Related events have been held at the Ice House Arts Complex and at Sophy's.[17][19]

Festival committee (2026)

Members of the festival committee in 2026.[30]

Ambassador
Founders and directors
Operations
  • Johnny Mam, director of operations
  • Rob K. Sok, director of operations
Art and web
  • Sot Kiep
  • P. Justin Kloth
Grants and communications
  • Pita Huot
  • Dr. Christine Su
  • Dr. Shawna Lesseur
Committee members
  • Ellen Wong
  • Rithy Hanh
  • Kathryn Lejeune
  • DJ Hunny
  • Vibol Hou
  • Robert Carleton-Chhaing
  • Vanara Taing
  • Herman Askew
  • Tony Te
  • Sophin Zoe
  • Andy Eap
  • Chan Pech Coy
  • Steve Vibol Meng
  • Natalie Chan
  • Pech SokThy
  • Thourn Heng
  • Kalyanee Mam
  • Adam Pfleghaar
  • Greg Cahill
  • Shawn Piseth Ros
  • Munika Lay
  • Varun Viswanath
  • Daron Ker
  • Chamreun Newton
  • James Buchanan McCreery
  • Bochan Huy

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 AsAmNews, Cambodia Town Film Festival and being seen (September 2024)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Cambodia Town Film Festival, About us
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Cambodia Town Film Festival, 2013 program book
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Cambodia Town Film Festival, 2019 program book
  5. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, Matt Dillon, Crocodile Man, and Cambodian Cinema at Cambodia Town Film Fest This Saturday (archived)
  6. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF OFFICIAL 2014 FILM LINEUP (archived)
  7. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF return SEPT 3 – 6, 2015 (archived)
  8. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF 2016 Sept 1-4 (archived)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Cambodia Town Film Festival, 2014 program book
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Cambodia Town Film Festival, 2018 program book
  11. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, 2017 program book
  12. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, 6TH ANNUAL CAMBODIA TOWN FILM FESTIVAL announces film and show lineup, September 15-16 (archived)
  13. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, Watch All These Films For FREE! (archived)
  14. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, The inaugural Kampung Film Festival at Koh Sdach (King's Island) in Cambodia (December 2023)
  15. ↑ Asia News Network, Cambodia Town Film Festival celebrates 10 years of cultural exchange (September 2024)
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF 2025 press release (August 2025)
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Long Beach Post, Cambodia Town Film Festival 2025: 50 years of remembrance and healing
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Cambodia Town Film Festival, 12th annual festival 2026
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Signal Tribune, things to do in Long Beach (September 2026)
  20. ↑ Art Theatre Long Beach, program for September 12, 2026
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF 2015 WINNERS (archived)
  22. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF 2016 Best Documentary Feature: LAST OF THE ELEPHANT MEN (archived)
  23. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF 2017 BEST DOCUMENTARY: A CAMBODIAN SPRING (archived)
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 24.5 24.6 24.7 Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF Awards 2024, September 20, 2024 (archived)
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 IMDb, Cambodia Town Film Festival awards 2024
  26. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, Home Court
  27. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF 2025 in PICTURES (09/14) (archived)
  28. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, 2015 program book
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Cambodia Town Film Festival, 2026 program book
  30. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, Committee members
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This page was last edited on 4 October 2026, at 18:18.