An Official Selection at Venice Film Critics’ Week, Austin Film Festival, Glasgow Film Festival, and many more, Karmalink follows a teenage boy’s dreams of past lives that lead him on a journey of self-exploration and digital enlightenment. “If someone told me the basic set-up for Karmalink, my first response would be: How did an American from Silicon Valley end up making a sci-fi movie in Cambodia and why?” said Jake Wachtel in his director’s statement.
Christopher Larsen co-wrote with Wachtel. The cast includes Srey Leak Chhith, Leng Heng Prak, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Cindy Sirinya Bishop, Rous Mony, and Sveng Socheata. Karmalink will be released in the US theatrically in major cities and on VOD on July 15, 2022.
The official synopsis reads: “Conceived as a way to interrogate processes of neo-colonialism, and highlighting the alienating effects of technological progress, Jake Wachtel’s Karmalink is a mind-bending tale of reincarnation, artificial consciousness, and the search for enlightenment. In a near-future Phnom Penh, the rich and privileged are augmented with nanotech, and new skyscrapers crowd the skyline. In Tralok Bek, a tight-knit community threatened with forced eviction, 13-year-old Leng Heng is having vivid dreams of his past lives. He and his friends are convinced they are meant to find a buried Buddhist statues to save their homes, and they seek out help from a street-smart girl in the neighborhood, Srey Leak. Together, they follow clues across town and into the past, uncovering a link with a genius neuroscientist on a quest for digital nirvana. As Leng Heng’s dreams converge on the present, his very sense of identity begins to unravel. When it becomes clear that the stakes are higher than they imagined, the two friends must decide how far they are willing to go to find their treasure and the truth.”
We have an exclusive clip from Karmalink ahead of its premiere. In the clip, we see Leng Heng and Srey Leak sitting in the AUGR Café. “He said I was augmented ten years ago,” says Leng Heng. “Nobody augments babies. You have to be 13,” responds Srey Leak. They continue their conversation as it becomes clear they’re in tune to an enhanced digital reality. “It records what you see… we’re going to use it to record your dreams.” You can watch the full clip below.
Exclusive Karmalink Clip
“My relationship with Cambodia began as a backpacker in 2010 and solidified in 2014 when I worked with Filmmakers Without Borders…. I fell deeply in love with Cambodia and this project emerged organically to celebrate its culture and people and talk about changes in its society. This genre I love — sci-fi — is conspicuously lacking in stories that transpire in places like Cambodia, in a way that speaks to something elitist or patronizing about the genre (i.e., ignoring the fact that Cambodia is speeding headlong into the future just as fast as anywhere),” stated Wachtel.
Karmalink, in fact, marks the first sci-fi movie to take place in Cambodia. In addition to its strong reception from festivals, it received applause from Variety saying, “this striking feature debut by U.S. filmmaker Jake Wachtel takes viewers on a fascinating and frequently wondrous expedition to a place where science and metaphysics intersect.”
Karmalink Official Trailer
“I bore witness to (and had lots of conversations with Cambodians about) the way the culture, the society was changing in the process of development. I saw how I was (inescapably) and ambassador/avatar of certain Western values and modes of living. I saw various forms of displacement: Literal displacement… families evicted… Cultural displacement — how did family structure change when kids began signing up for Facebook and creating profiles? The very design of Facebook has a profoundly different effect in a community-oriented place like Cambodia than it does in the individual West, where the technology was developed. All this was swimming in my mind when the ideas for Karmalink began to coalesce,” stated Wachtel.
Prior to Karmalink, Wachtel wrote and directed the short film The Foreigner Here with Filmmakers Without Borders, taking place in Cambodia. Karmalink marks his feature length debut as a director, writer, and producer. The majority of the cast and crew for Karmalink are Cambodian and include his former students.
“Karmalink is a story about collisions that occur in the process of development — tradition and modernity, science and religion, East and West. Ultimately, the story is a clarion call for more empathy and understanding for the disenfranchised and displaced, as we hurtle ever faster into a more homogenize, consumerist, and connected future,” stated Wachtel.
Karmalink comes to us from Good Deed Entertainment. It has a runtime of 102 minutes in Khmer with English subtitles.