For a smile of child
Duration: 52′
Director(s): Xavier de Lauzanne & Antoine Trébouta
Production: Aloest Productions & Imaxys
DVD Editor: Aloest Productions
Official website: https://www.aloest.com/pse/index.html
Awards
International Human Rights Film Festival (France) – Official Selection
Synopsis
Twenty years ago, as they travelled around the world in an RV with their four children, Christian and Marie-France des Pallières were completely unaware of the people who awaited them at the end of their adventures, in unnamable distress, the little Phnom Penh rag-and-bone children…
So every year, acquainted to their nomad lifestyle, Christian and Marie-France wander about France, still in their clattering RV equipped with a screen and a video projector, in order to testify what they saw in Cambodia and obtain the necessary resources for their fight. There are three children from the Phnom Penh dump with them, dancing and tagging along on the journey which will save several hundreds again this year. Back in Cambodia, in the morning, among the dumpster trucks, the children pulled out from the dump by the French charity rounds are crossing by. With a schoolbag on their back, walk into the school Christian and Marie-France opened for them and that is constantly growing.
In the middle of all this misery, cries of joy sound in the playground, the children are free from any dirt, they have reclaimed their “right to childhood” and their beauty gives hope for a new Cambodia.
By daring to to the impossible close to the apocalyptic setting of the dump, Christian and Marie-France are constantly put to the test with all the unbearable sufferings they have to face every day. As a compensation, they are rewarded with a present they wouldn’t give up for anything in the world : the 1800 newly replenished smiles of the children around them.