The benefits of globalisation are evident every day in the exotic ingredients on our plates and the cheap fashion in our wardrobes. In Cambodia, the Tonle Sap river changes course twice a year. The lives of the people living on its banks have been the same for decades, but a rapidly changing world is beginning to leave its mark on the landscape around them.

 

What’s wrong with progress? supporters of industrialisation and mass production will wonder. It’s a source of income, after all. Rural Cambodians wrestle with the same question. Many of them have already sold their land to large companies. Young people are finding work in the cities and sending money home. They are torn between missing their families on the one hand and their lack of prospects on the other.

 

Filmmaker Kalyanee Mam spent two years filming three young Cambodians fighting the crushing consequences of deforestation, overfishing and poverty. In the past they were afraid of wild animals in the jungle, now their biggest fear is people, says 14-year-old Sari Math.

 

A River Changes Course is a breath-taking journey through the mountainous jungles and floating cities of the Cambodian countryside to the bustling clothing factories in the capital Phnom Penh. The film shows the devastating effects of globalisation, not from the ecological but from the human perspective, with cultural diversity as the most important loss.