“I want to tell people about our nightmares.”
These are the words attributed to an anonymous Cambodian survivor of human trafficking at the end of Buoyancy, a naturalistic yet impassioned look at slavery in the modern fishing industry. According to the titles that come up at the end of the film, writer-director Rodd Rathjen spoke to many survivors to craft his tense and heartbreaking story of the atrocities that so many are currently suffering. Over 200,000 men and boys in Southeast Asia are estimated to be enslaved in the fishing industry alone. It’s a $6 billion worldwide industry; the characters we get to know over the course of the film are working 22-hour days, being beaten and starved and tortured, and often dying so that their daily catch can be turned into dog food.
Chakra (Sarm Heng) is a 14-year-old Cambodian boy who wants nothing more than to escape his life and make his own way in the world. He lives with his parents and his many siblings, working in the fields all day with the knowledge that his destiny is to keep doing this work until he’s too old to do it anymore. The only change on the horizon is that he will eventually work for his older brother rather than his father. When Chakra learns that there are high-paying jobs in Thailand, he asks a friend to get him in touch with the people who can smuggle him over the border. He runs away, seeking a life of wealth and independence. But when he arrives at the pick-up point without the required $500, he discovers hell itself.
Rather than sending Chakra to the factory to make money, the smuggler sells him to Rom Ran (Thanawut Kasro), the psychotic captain of a fishing trawler who sees his crew as subhuman and expendable. He delights in punishing the men who try to escape or otherwise misbehave, including Kea (Mony Ros), Chakra’s only friend on the boat. One moment of particularly shocking violence is so cruel and appalling that the viewer feels in their soul that it was based on a true account. The entire film feels horrifyingly true to life: the small details of the cruelties and indignities that the enslaved men and boys face add up to a suffocating and hopeless reality.
The whole industry is set up to prevent escape. The smugglers pack the bodies of desperate people into trucks in the dead of night and communicate with each other via walkie-talkies regarding the state of their “cargo.” Kea knows right away that it is a trap, but at that point it’s too late; the smugglers are armed and violent, and the people seeking work have nowhere else to go. Once Kea and Chakra make it onto the boat, they rarely see land and only ever see other slavers or their victims. Ron Ram and his subordinates carry guns at all times and make sure that their enslaved crew are too beaten down, both physically and psychologically, to fight back against their captors. Shots of the ocean reveal it to be a prison as the camera zooms out from the boat to reveal never-ending waves on all sides; hundreds of miles from any shoreline, Chakra is ironically confined by the wide open spaces that surround him.
The cast all give gripping and naturalistic performances, and Sarm Heng is remarkable in his role. His face is open but guarded, always watching and learning how best to survive in his new reality. He’s not incredibly emotive but he still conveys the horrors of his daily life with a devastating effectiveness. When Chakra plays with a crab that he finds in the daily catch, the innocent joy and wonder on his face remind the viewer that he is still very much a child. It’s one of the most wrenching moments in the film because we see his humanity briefly escape his bondage and we wonder what this boy would be like if he had never ended up in this hell. This moment also makes it that much more heartbreaking when Chakra’s impossible situation inevitably begins to chip away at his humanity and decency. In order to survive and possibly even escape, Chakra must become a different person and commit acts that he never would have thought himself capable of doing.
Buoyancy tells a vital story of unimaginable suffering and shines a light on the nightmares that so many people are living through at this very moment. The tense, minimalist naturalism makes sure that the story gets under the viewer’s skin and pierces their ignorance or complacency. As the anonymous survivor states at the end of the film: “You are afraid of people, even of daylight. No one can hear you out there.” With this film, Rathjen wants the voices of these trapped, suffering people to be heard.
The film is available in virtual cinemas through Kino Marquee.
