While it was well-received out of competition at the First Southeast Asia Film Festival, I must admit I feel an imperative desire to produce a second feature film after the success of Red Lotus . I have finished writing a script of about 120 pages on the relations between friends as seen in different situations. It will particularly focus on the different conditions of life experienced by the young and the old and what they think of each other in their minds. It will be very difficult to realize this project, however. The market in Laos is just too small, so there is no way to get back the money you invest by only selling it domestically.
Outside help is needed, either from the government or from foreign investors.
But film production by the government is usually restricted to only one or two films a year on government conferences or state celebrations. Recently, the Laotian government has expressed the intention to finance a film production, but as long as the country has other more urgent priorities, the Laotian cinema will remain a dream in the heads of a few Laotian filmmakers. Laotian cinema does not really exist. There are no other independent filmmakers in Laos. There are nine of us at Lao-Inter Arts, all of whom left the Ministry of Information and Culture to help form the company.