Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

It’s the future in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Leng Heng is a teenaged boy who lives with his family in a poor section of town. He has strange dreams, centred on a small, seated buddha made of gold. He believes his dreams are evidence of his past lives. 

Meanwhile, unscrupulous developers are trying to kick his family — and all his friends and neighbours — out of their homes and relocated far from the city. And his Grandma, who suffers from dementia and memory loss,  is visited by a prestigious doctor testing a new sort of therapy. So he asks some of his friends — and a girl named Srey Leak — to help him find the golden Buddha. It’s a fun adventure, and they could all use the money. More than that it would prove his vivid dreams are real, and represent a link to the karma of his past incarnations. But he soon suspects there’s more powers at work here than just his dreams.

Karmalink is a new film out of Cambodia that looks at poverty, history, reincarnation and Buddhism, as well as neuroscience, memory, computer algorithms and virtual reality set against a futuristic Phnom Penh. It’s in Khmer, and stars first- time actors in realistic settings. Unusual, intriguing and a pleasure to watch — you’ve probably never seen any movie quite like it —  Karmalink is Cambodia’s first science fiction film. It’s also the first feature by American filmmaker Jake Wachtel. Originally from the Silicon Valley, he is known for his short documentaries set in the Global South, and his work has been featured in the NY Times, NPR and Wired.

I spoke with Jake Wachtel in Los Angeles via ZOOM.

Karmalink opens in select theatres and on VOD on July 15th.