Kid Detectives Navigate Beautiful Near-Future Cambodia in Karmalink

At the same time, the more complicated implications of using nanobot injections to allow people to turn their brains into computers and the world into a smartphone are mostly unexplored, aside from Leng Heng gradually shifting into a walking daze as he seeks the treasure of his remembered past lives. Drawing on Wachtel’s own study of Theravada Buddhism, he and Christopher Larsen’s script incorporates plenty of ideological complexity that could overwhelm the emotional core if less well-managed. But Karmalink never feels heavy or slow, even as its sense of adventure relies on hope and faith rather than chases or explosions.

This partially works because the aesthetic immerses us. Robert Leitzell’s cinematography, Danny Bokator’s art department, Olga Miasnikova’s production design, Evren Catlin and Miasnikova’s costumes, Alana Pryor Ackerman’s set decoration—it all establishes the impoverished outskirts of a metropolis. While physical detritus and garbage figure into parts of the world, it’s never drab and there’s no overuse of the divisive yellow filter; colors highlight and illuminate the world without ever feeling false. The camerawork makes the story easy to follow and the scene-setting is elegant, especially when combined with the editing by Harrison Atkins and Stephanie Kaznocha to transition between the past lives. The first depiction of the Farmer that finds the Thief’s buried treasure is especially memorable: I want this beautiful landscape snapshot of rural life on a poster. The FX team, led by Blaise Hossain, creates clean, immersive, plausible real-world applications of augmented reality laid atop buildings in advertisements and deployed as in-brain cameras. The places where they interact with dreams and visions are especially impressive. Simultaneously, Vincent Villa’s sound design and Ariel Marx’s score—especially the use of chimes and percussion—make the film feel like it exists between documentary and sci-fi.

Being about memory, Karmalink is also a film inherently about history. The French occupation and U.S. bombing of Cambodia both figure into Leng Heng’s past lives as reminders of how culturally important treasures change hands, and how the lives of people in the Global South are affected by the whims of colonial powers. This is reinforced by subtle touches about how this world differs from that familiar to most American audiences. While Cambodia is not in a declared war, it is implied that Leng Heng’s father is contracted as a low-level soldier in foreign conflict; when Srey Leak first does business with Leng Heng and his friends, she pays for an old hard drive disc with American dollars, which Ty says nobody wants. I can’t speculate as to how this sat with Cambodian viewers, but Americans might find that to be a notable touch—implying a future loss of prestige or reflecting a current one.

I’m excited about Wachtel’s next picture, and even more excited to see what his filmmaking students in Cambodia eventually come up with. Karmalink is a very good story about child detectives trying to make do in an imbalanced and unfair world. Like Inception, it nods at the human desire to escape into our dreams, and like much of sci-fi, it grapples with human reliance on technology. Some of the most interesting implications go unexplored, but it’s beautiful to look at and delights where it treads.

Director: Jake Wachtel
Writer: Jake Wachtel, Christopher Larsen
Starring: Srey Leak Chhith, Leng Heng Prak, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Cindy Sirinya Bishop, Rous Mony, Sveng Socheata
Release Date: July 15, 2022

Kevin Fox, Jr. is a freelance writer with an MA in history, who loves videogames, film, TV, and sports, and dreams of liberation. He can be found on Twitter @kevinfoxjr.