Mass international migration of Cambodians in modern history is most commonly cited in connection with civil wars that began in the late 1960s and culminated in the genocidal regime of 1975–79. Tonight, Meta House screens two documentaries about Cambodians in exile.

* As an artist and political activist, Ung Bun Heang was both an idealist and a passionate, unforgiving Cambodian nationalist. Under the pen name ‘Sacrava’, he fired off a barrage of scurrilous cartoons attacking not only the Prime Minister and the Hun Sen regime but equally the royalists, the late King Father Sihanouk, America, China and all of Cambodia’s neighbours, especially Thailand and Vietnam. No one was spared, not even the opposition when he felt they needed a bite on the ankles – or, what he called, a poke with his pen. But he paid the price. Heang knew he could never return to his beloved homeland from his adopted one, Australia. “I know exactly I am an ugly, black sheep in Cambodia,” he once said. Above all, the artist longed for a new generation of Cambodians that would question, think critically and speak out with the sort of freedoms he had discovered abroad. STRADDLING TWO WORLDS (2013, 21 min) profiles the late artist. Please be our guests for its Cambodian premiere.

* Dr. Ottara Kem never spoke about his Cambodian past to his German daughters. But on his deathbed he desired to be buried in Cambodia. With the fulfillment of his wish begins an intense, conciliative, and poetic journey through the story of his life. BONNE NUIT PAPA (2014, 101 min) is directed by Ottara’s daughter, Marina Kem. Tracing the footsteps of her father, the German filmmaker immerses herself deeper and deeper into the history of Cambodia's ideological wars and towards her Cambodian family and identity. The film had its Cambodian premiere at the Cambodian International Film Festival 2014. We’ll screen the Khmer version with English subtitles.