It all began with a dusty DVD.

It sat quietly in the corner of our dining table in Phnom Penh, its cover showing a woman planting rice under the rain—palm trees behind her, the sky heavy and low. The film, People in the Rice Field (អ្នកស្រែ), faded into the furniture, forgotten by time.

I was 13 when I mistook it for a music CD. The player clicked but failed to read it. A dark green flash on the screen—like an unsolved riddle—stayed with me.

By 19, I was cycling through Beijing’s alleyways, filming weddings on DV to earn pocket money. One summer back home, I reinserted that DVD—this time, it had sound. And images.

At 25, I filmed my first short, Flavor of Amok, on the banks of the Mekong. At 29, I co-directed Gaokao 2020, named “Most Globally Influential Documentary” by China’s film bureau and aired on National Geographic Asia.

Today, I explore the narrative frontier between realism and Web3, crafting visual languages for decentralized systems. As both a filmmaker and ARRI-certified cinematographer, I continue to trace light between physical and digital worlds—telling stories that name the unnamed.