The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) Director: Ellen Kuras & Thavisouk Phrasavath, Country: US/Laos; Release: 2008, Runtime: 100

Screened : Sat Jun 14: 6:30 and Sun Jun 15: 8:30

Ellen Kuras has been shooting other people’s movies for years and it turns out she has also been shooting her own. The Betrayal, which she made with and about her friend Thavisouk Phrasavath, takes it’s audience from Laos to New York from the 1980s to the present. It’s a film that deals with family, war and the bonds that we keep and the bonds that we break.

The story centers on Phrasavath and his experience growing up in Laos and what happened when the CIA pulled out of Laos and left his father and family to fend for themselves. His father had been working for the US, and when they left he had nowhere to turn. Phrasavath talks of how his mother survived, his immigrant experience and how his family grew apart a sa result of the paths their life went.

It’s a slow film and one that’s crafted with care. Kuras’ camera is beautiful and captures each time and place perfectly. It’s amazing to see a film that has pristine 1980’s footage in it, along with the same quality of footage from the present. It almost makes the film seen to be fiction as for so long documentaries has relied on less than stellar archival footage to express the past.You can see that Kuras cares about her subjects and that this film has been a labor of love and while this can sometimes cause a film to lose it’s edge, the subject here isn’t smooth and the edges are what define it.

I reccommend watching the below video to listen to Kuras and Phrasavath talk about their film: