\n\tIn\u00a0Cambodian Beer Dreams, world premiering at the\u00a0Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival<\/a>\u00a0CPH:DOX<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday, March 12, Nansen follows Kim Eng, a lone activist who stands up to the beer industry and \u201cneo-colonial alcohol capitalism\u201d in his fight for a national alcohol law. <\/p>\n \n\tAudiences can find out what the filmmaker sees and hears on this journey in the\u00a0F:act Award section<\/a>\u00a0of the Danish festival, whose\u00a023rd edition<\/a>\u00a0runs March 11-22. But you can expect Cambodian Beer Girls, produced by Malene Flindt Pedersen of Hansen & Pedersen and Signe Skov Thomsen, to go into the dreams, such as promises of money, success and life as a party, and the nightmares, including phone threats and wandering hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNansen talked to THR about how he came to make Cambodian Beer Dreams, including his personal experiences, the universal themes behind his exploration of alliances between power and money, and how he tries to take audiences inside the heads of alcoholics.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\u2018Cambodian Beer Dreams\u2019 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Laurits Nansen<\/p>\n \n\tI had no idea about the rapid growth of the beer industry in Cambodia and the dangers involved. How did you find out about this and decide to make a film about it?<\/p>\n \n\tI wanted to do a story about alcohol because it affects a lot of people, and I wanted to look at the forces that drive and shape the way we look at alcohol. In Denmark and in Europe overall, you almost can\u2019t see the problem, because it\u2019s so big and so embedded in our culture. So I needed to find a new angle into this, so that we can reflect on it. <\/p>\n \n\tI started to do a lot of research and then stumbled onto Cambodia and saw that they don\u2019t have a national alcohol law, alcohol consumption was just booming, and this was very intriguing to me. So I just bought a plane ticket to go there with my camera. I had an idea of what this story could look like, but when I arrived in Phnom Penh in 2022, I was still pretty surprised. I felt beer had an even bigger impact than I had expected. <\/p>\n \n\tIn Phnom Penh and other cities, there were so many beer commercials. In many places, there are more than street signs. This is not in the film, but Kim Eng and I were driving on a road, and he was counting the beer commercials. He reached 46 within one kilometer\u2019s drive. And they are also using the ring on beer cans and bottles \u2013 you can win a motorbike or thousands of dollars with that. <\/p>\n \n\tThis idea of connecting gambling with alcoholism to [market to] a very poor population made me ask so many questions. What is going on here? What drove this development?<\/p>\n \n\tI heard you also have personal experiences with the dangers of alcohol in your family?<\/p>\n \n\tYes. Like many Danes and Europeans, I have a history with that. My father died [after several years of alcohol abuse]. But I did not want to tell a personal story about that. I wanted to find out about the bigger structures behind this so that everybody can relate to it. <\/p>\n \n\tFor me, it\u2019s always about chasing the bigger story to see what drives it and how it affects ethics, morality and human behavior. When you have these two forces just driving parallel and together, alcohol and raw capitalism, it\u2019s just so powerful. Both forces are so powerful and so wild. So, what happens when you unleash them like two wild animals?<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tLaurits Nansen, courtesy of Laurits Nansen<\/p>\n \n\tSpeaking of the bigger story: There are all sorts of universal angles to the story you tell\u2026<\/p>\n \n\tYes, I hope that the film has universal aspects. I hope that people can see that it\u2019s not just a film about Cambodia and beer, but it\u2019s a lens into our time and the future as well. Cambodia is kind of a laboratory to observe what happens when authoritarian regimes and big corporations make alliances in a way that benefit them both economically and on the power level, but it\u2019s not necessarily good for people. <\/p>\n \n\tDreams and their destruction is also a theme in the film. Cambodian people are warm and hardworking, and you have people who dream of a better life, of a better future. And in some way, these dreams and hopes are being used and corrupted to sell something. In that sense, it\u2019s not only a story about the beer industry, but the fact that simple commodities can be used to shape people and society. <\/p>\n \n\tMarket forces are not neutral. They have consequences. They shape people, and it can be pretty profound when profit outweighs ethics. So, it\u2019s not an anti-beer or anti-alcohol film. I like a good IPA myself. It\u2019s more about the scale and ethics of it.<\/p>\n \n\tYour doc touches on how Carlsberg has stopped working with big prices, but it has focused on another area that raises questions…<\/p>\n Instead, they are focusing more on young people, which is another problem. Because they would not do that back home, right? Yeah. A big part of the Cambodian population is very young. And if you are in the marketing department, you look at population numbers and you know what to do. But again, it raises ethical questions. But nobody\u2019s watching \u2013 unless you go there with a camera.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\u2018Cambodian Beer Dreams\u2019 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Laurits Nansen<\/p>\n \n\tDid you know about the use of \u201cbeer girls\u201d to entice people to drink more before you arrived in Cambodia? Hearing about what their work involves was harrowing.<\/p>\n \n\tI knew about that already because of Carlsberg. There had been reports in the Danish press about beer girls and the way they handle them. <\/p>\n \n\tHow did you approach the aesthetics of the film, going from drinking and party scenes to the serious issues and sections that have a feel of a hangover?<\/p>\n \n\tWe wanted to create a film where you see hopes and dreams, but then also the tensions and the claustrophobic feeling that an alcoholic would experience. We are sometimes going into the mind of an alcoholic in the film, where you are kind of stuck and cannot get out. I wanted to describe this duality, the energy and the dreams, as well as the nightmares, because I think it\u2019s important.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat\u2019s next for you?<\/p>\n \n\tI have my own production company, called Eight Pictures. We are in production on a film in the U.S. right now. It\u2019s about the obesity epidemic, another interesting issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alcohol consumption in Cambodia has increased fivefold over the past two decades, and beer has been the big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[108,8200,762],"class_list":["post-36921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-copenhagen","tag-copenhagen","tag-cphdox","tag-international"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116205194332266588","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n