Chheangkea at the Sundance Institute Directors Lab This month Filmmaker is publishing diaries from writers and directors who attended the 2025 Sundance Institute Directors Lab. Today we’re sharing the diary of Chheangkea, who traveled to the Lab with Little Phnom Penh. Here’s the description: “Spanning two ever-changing decades, from post–Khmer Rouge Phnom Penh to early 2000s California, a Cambodian woman grapples with her deep personal desires, untimely love, and shifting family roles amid profound cultural and historical upheavals.” A complete list of Sundance Labs participants can be found here. — Editor
All I wanted when I arrived at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park for the Directors Lab was an “Estes Park” sweatshirt to keep me warm. The desire consumed me. I had packed light, too excited for the summer months, but quickly realized how unprepared I was for the cold at such high altitude. At the first moment of free time, I marched down into town and bought myself a perfectly soft sweatshirt that I’ll wear for years to come.
Normally, when you go into production, the intention is simple: you’re there to make a film. But at a Lab, you’re there to learn. And how does one prepare to learn? I’m not sure I knew how—but maybe being prepared wasn’t the point of it. Looking back, I think I was so overwhelmed by the challenges and unknowns in front of me that all I could focus on was getting a souvenir to wear so I could fulfill my basic need to be warm.
In the real world, as a director, I rely on building a trusted team that allows me to create safely, especially because my work is often so personal. But at the Directors Lab, that kind of autonomy isn’t granted. With care and consideration, the Lab assigns your collaborators and locations for you. Stripped of control, I had to surrender to the process—not of learning from making, but learning while making.
Because my film centers a majority Cambodian/Cambodian-American cast, I wanted to use the Lab as an opportunity to work with the kind of actors I plan to cast in the actual production. Cambodia isn’t known for having a wealth of trained actors, and instead of broadening my search for professionals to do these scenes in English, I stuck to my instincts and brought three Cambodian women with no prior acting experience with me—one of whom was my own mom.
By the time we shot our first scene, we’d already been at the Lab for a week. A week of workshops, lectures, test shoots and bonding. I quickly realized I was stepping into a well-oiled machine that has been running for decades. We, the fellows, were the guests—being welcomed into a family that comes together year after year to hold space for this Lab.
My first scene is about a mother telling her young daughter to marry in order to relieve her of caretaking duties in her old age. It is a fairly straightforward scene with little blocking. I chose it because I still didn’t fully understand Ma, the mother character. Because casting an older Cambodian woman was so difficult, I went straight to the source of inspiration for this character: my mom.
She had never acted before, and casting her gave me deeper access to her own mother, whom Ma is based on. Everyone warned me it would be challenging to work with my mom, but ever the optimist, I refused to believe them. Again, I was not prepared. We had only one day to rehearse, and I spent almost its entirety trying to figure out how to direct my mom as an actor and not a parent. Once I understood that she needed time to prepare and memorize her lines to build confidence before she could let go and be present, the scene began to take shape.
My lead actor, Ponita Keo, is a documentarian and artist who also had never acted before. Her deep curiosity about people is what drew me to her. During rehearsal, she gently asked my mom direct questions that informed her character’s own interiority. Though I’ve only made two short films, I recognize that Ponita’s final performance in the last shot of this scene is the single best performance I’ve captured on camera so far. Her quivering eyes in that shot still shatter my heart.
Though the first shoot day was far from easy, I walked away feeling confident in my actors and my crew. My wonderful DP, Jo Jo Lam, managed to transform the Stanley Hotel’s Billiards Room into something that evoked 1983 Phnom Penh. The scene wasn’t perfect, but I was proud. So I entered our second shoot day with bold confidence. Again, the optimist in me expected flow and magic. Spoiler alert: that didn’t happen.
The second scene takes place twenty years after the first. Ponita now had to play a 37-year-old single mother raising a teenager in Long Beach, CA. I had cast Kaitlyn Mady as her daughter after spotting a Facebook post in a Cambodian American community group announcing a young Khmer girl had been accepted to Harvard. Unlike the first scene that required little blocking, this one was more ambitious. I wanted to practice intentional camera movements, which added more complexity for my first-time actors than I had foreseen.
My advisor that day was Ed Harris. By the time he arrived, we were already on take nine of only the very first shot. Doing this many takes is not part of my directing process, so I was absolutely embarrassed. But Ed stood calmly by me and urged me to keep pushing for the vision I had. So finally, on take 15—three hours into the day—the shot finally came alive in an organic way where the camera and actors moved harmoniously. The rest of the day was also far from smooth, but it was in these rough patches that I learned the most.
After all, that’s the point of the Lab: to learn while making.
By the end of our time at Estes Park, the weather had warmed, and I no longer needed my trusted Estes Park sweatshirt. It had taken care of me when I needed comfort and a distraction from my fears going into the Lab. But now, I can safely fold it away as I head into the actual making of the film in sunny Cambodia and California—carrying with me instead only the lessons and confidence I’ve gained from these 16 life-changing days at the Directors Lab