Buoyancy (2019)

AKA: –
Directed by: Rodd Rathjen
Starring: Sarm Heng (Boy), Thanawut Kasro (Captain), Mony Ros (Older friend on the boat), Saicheer Wongwirot (Captain’s accomplice)
Country: Thailand, Cambodia, Australia; Effed Up Asian Cinema
Language: Thai, Khmer (Eng Subs)
Runtime: 01:32:01
Genres: Human Trafficking, Teenager, Misery

Plot – Spoilers:
A 14-year-old Cambodian works hard in the fields all day and is convinced his father is partial to his older brother while making him do all the backbreaking work. The girl he likes goes to school unlike him and seems a receding dream every passing day. And beyond the fields, the highway with its constant traffic is a daily reminder of the world moving briskly while he remains stuck.

So he decides to get the hell out of his village and take up work in a factory in neighboring Thailand. But when he gets there, before he can even figure what’s going on, he finds himself on a fishing trawler helmed by a cruel gang and surrounded by a vast uninhabited sea that is deaf to anyone’s pleas for help or mercy.

Work on the boat is relentless and food is a cup of rice, but the boy is young, naive and hopeful that if he works hard and long enough, he’ll be allowed to return to the high-paying factory job he left home for. In contrast to him, is an older friend, who from the outset is low on hope but a sort of anchor for him to get through the days.

Buoyancy is a beautiful take on exploitation in a niche segment – small fish caught to make pet food – yet it highlights the scale of dispensability of human life associated with something so seemingly ordinary.