"The idea at the heart of this film is to gather a group of actors around a project that exemplifies the reality Cambodian people live in: something inside us – dignity, identity – is rotting to shreds. To recover our memory after the tragedy of genocide," the director wrote in a synopsis for the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. "We are in the process of losing our memory. Cambodia is a land of broken dreams. There is no more theatre, no more playhouses."