Creator

Davy Chou

ដេវី ជូ

Davy Chou is a Cambodian-French director and producer whose films include the documentary Golden Slumbers and the feature Diamond Island.

Davy Chou (ដេវី ជូ) is a Cambodian-French filmmaker, screenwriter and producer whose films include Golden Slumbers, Diamond Island and Return to Seoul.[1] He founded the production company Vycky Films and co-founded the Phnom Penh production company Anti-Archive.[2][3] He works between France and Cambodia and produces work by emerging Cambodian filmmakers.[1]

Career

A smiling man with black hair and glasses in a dark shirt, seen in profile.
Davy Chou at the Côté Court film festival, Pantin, 2012. Photo: 自由馴鹿 (ZiYouXunLu), CC BY-SA 3.0

Davy Chou first went to Cambodia at 25, planning to stay six months, and decided to live there.[4] He did not attend film school.[5] In 2008 he made the short film Expired on a trip to Cambodia; it was selected for the Entrevues festival in Belfort.[6][7] In 2009 he founded the French production company Vycky Films with Jacky Goldberg and Sylvain Decouvelaere.[6]

Also in 2009 he moved to Phnom Penh and set up a filmmaking workshop for 60 students in four schools.[6][8] The workshop produced Twin Diamonds, a 50-minute collective film shown in Cambodia. In October 2009 he founded Kon Khmer Koun Khmer, a collective of young Cambodian students and artists.[6][7] The same month he curated Golden Reawakening, an exhibition on the golden age of Cambodian cinema in the 1960s and 1970s.[6][9]

In 2014 he created Anti-Archive, a Cambodian production company, with the filmmakers Steve Chen and Kavich Neang.[8] Through Anti-Archive he produces films by filmmakers from France, Thailand, Italy and Cambodia, among them the Cambodian directors Kavich Neang, Danech San and Sreylin Meas.[3] He co-produced Arthur Harari's Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle, which opened Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2021.[1][3] His filmmaking centers on the dreams, fantasies and hopes of young people.[1]

Films

Golden Slumbers

Nearly 400 films were made in Phnom Penh between 1960 and 1975, and only about 30 survive; the Khmer Rouge burned them or let them decay.[7] In 2010 he recorded the memories of people from that golden age, among them the actress Dy Saveth and the directors Ly Bun Yim, Yvon Hem and Liv Sreng. He also filmed the places where cinemas and studios had stood.[10][5][4] He has dated his years in Cambodia making the film to 2009 through May 2010.[4]

The result, Golden Slumbers (in Khmer ដំណេក មាស, Dâmnek Meas), was his first feature-length film. The documentary is built from the memories of veteran filmmakers and actors, using spoken testimony and cinematic scenes in place of lost archive footage.[2][8][4] Vycky Films produced it. It screened at the Busan International Film Festival in 2011 and in the Berlinale Forum in 2012, and more than 40 international festivals selected it.[7][8][3] Bodega Films released it in France, where it opened in theaters on September 19, 2012, and Icarus Films released it in the United States.[8][2]

Cambodia 2099

Cambodia 2099 (2014), which Chou wrote and directed, is a short film set entirely on Diamond Island in Phnom Penh, where two friends tell each other about the dreams they had the night before.[2][8] It was selected for the 2014 Directors' Fortnight at Cannes and won the Grand Prix at the 2014 Festival du Film de Vendôme and the Grand Prize of Curtas Vila do Conde.[2][8]

Diamond Island

A man in glasses and a dark jacket holds a gold swan-shaped trophy outdoors.
Davy Chou with an award at the Cabourg film festival, 2016. Photo: Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0

Diamond Island (2016), his first fiction feature, follows young people in contemporary Cambodia. Chou chose Diamond Island, also called Koh Pich, after watching young people there amid construction and rapid change.[5] He wrote the script over four years, through several versions, before the film was financed, and it was developed through the TorinoFilmLab Framework program.[5][2] Aurora Films, Vycky Films and Anti-Archive produced it.[8] For the cast he used non-professional actors. His team searched Phnom Penh for several months and met hundreds of young people, and the actors trained for three months. Filming took seven weeks, mainly on Diamond Island and also in Kampong Chhnang, with a mixed Cambodian and French crew.[5]

The film premiered in Critics' Week at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016, where it won the SACD Award from France's screenwriters' and authors' society.[2][5] It went on to many other festival selections and prizes.[11]

Return to Seoul

Return to Seoul (2022), which Chou wrote and directed, follows a French-raised Korean adoptee who travels to Seoul and explores her identity.[1][2] First-time actress Park Ji-min plays the lead. The film is in French and runs 117 minutes.[12][13] Chou has said that although he is not Korean, adopted or a woman, he felt connected to the story in several ways.[12]

The film premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2022. It represented Cambodia at the 2023 Oscars and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.[1][2] It was nominated for Best International Film at the 2023 Independent Spirit Awards,[14] and Chou was nominated for Best Director at the 2023 Asian Film Awards.[12]

In development

From May to July 2024 Chou held a Villa Albertine residency in Chicago and Los Angeles. He is co-writing a feature with the novelist Sabri Louatah, which he will direct, about a young father whose life changes when a young stranger appears. It is set in Chicago, with scenes at Lincoln Park and Belmont Harbor.[3]

Recognition

Return to Seoul won awards at the Belfast and Athens film festivals, and Chou won Best Director at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.[3] Chou served on the Un Certain Regard jury at Cannes in 2023, and the same year he appeared as an actor in Chambre 999, shown in Cannes Classics.[1]

Works


See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Festival de Cannes
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Wikipedia
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Villa Albertine
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 A Rabbit's Foot, The Search for Home: A Conversation with Davy Chou (September 7, 2023)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 VOA Khmer, Hoeun Sopheak, A Filmmaker Takes Inspiration From Cambodia's Youth (June 15, 2016)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Vycky Films, Golden Slumbers, a film by Davy Chou, press kit (2012)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Berlinale Forum, Le sommeil d'or / Golden Slumbers, catalogue sheet (2012)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 TorinoFilmLab, Davy Chou
  9. ↑ The Christian Science Monitor, Geoffrey Cain and Kounila Keo, Cambodia: Cut off by Khmer Rouge, film scene revives at refugees return (December 16, 2009)
  10. ↑ VOA Khmer, Borei Sylyvann, Cambodia's Golden Age of Cinema, Told on Film (October 19, 2011)
  11. ↑ La Semaine de la Critique, Davy Chou
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 South China Morning Post, James Marsh, Return to Seoul director Davy Chou on cultures clashing in his hit movie (February 15, 2023)
  13. ↑ A/Perture Cinema, Return to Seoul
  14. ↑ Backstage, Suzy Woltmann, Film Independent Spirit Awards 2023: Everything Everywhere All at Once Leads Nomination List (November 23, 2022)
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This page was last edited on 9 October 2026, at 04:49.