Kiyé Simon Luang

After thirty-five years spent in France, Hèk returns to Laos: in the meantime, his father has died there. With Hé, his brother who remained to live there, on the intervention of their mother who wants to offer him his last trip, he takes the paternal ashes to his native village, in the mountains of the North. It is this journey undertaken by tuk tuk, a flexible but risky means of transport, which brings loss, mourning, healing and perhaps a form of reconciliation within him.

France works at her family’s karaoke restaurant on an old boat at the shores of lake Nam Ngum. She falls in love with Xana, an underwater logger, while Tony Wong, a quiet and sentimental Chinese billionaire which is exploiting this subwater richness declares his heart to her. It’s then that Hugo arrives in search of his wife Nadine who left one year ago… He enters a surreal period of exile, captivated by life around the lake’s splendour.

In winter, during the low water season, sand islands appear in the middle of the Mekong. Appropriating these lands, men, women and children walk, run, fish or play. They make these non-places located between two shores, spaces of freedom and communion with nature.