Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers (2006)

Run Time - 91 min.  |   Countries - United States  |  
  • AllMovie Rating
  • User Ratings (0)
  • Your Rating

Share on

Synopsis by Mark Deming

Filmmaker Rithy Panh offers a compassionate but unflinching look at the lives of prostitutes in Cambodia in this documentary. Panh allows a handful of streetwalkers who've gathered in a run-down Phnom Penn apartment block to tell their stories of the grim circumstances of their lives -- violent and exploitive pimps, abusive customers, poor wages, unexpected pregnancy, disease, ostracism by their families and community, and lives that are all but spent at the age of 35. While Panh's subjects don't shy away from discussing the sexual details of their work, the emphasis isn't on the sensational but on women whose lives have been ground into dust by their experiences. Le Papier ne peut pas envelopper la braise (aka Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers) received its North American premiere at the 2008 San Francisco Asian-American Film Festival.