In 1999 the first fibre optics cable was laid across Cambodia. Rithy Panh recounts several weeks in the life of a poor Cambodian family – a woman, a disabled ex-service man and seven children, the eldest only 10 years old – working as laborers digging the trench for the communications superhighway. Armed with rudimentary hoes and paid by the metre, they work day and night. They cannot afford electricity let alone reap the rewards of new technology. In the course of their work they unearth mines, bombs and human remains, evidence of Cambodia’s traumatic history. As they do, they are forced to confront their own past, their fears and their memories.
