The Land of the Wandering Souls

It’s 1999, and the French telecom giant Alcatel is starting to lay the first fiber-optic cable through Southeast Asia. The project provides a few months’ labor through local contractors for Cambodian workers, who dig the ditches for the cable. The grotesque irony is that they are working for progress that will never be theirs. They are so ignorant of its purpose that it is explained to them through the analogy of a wizard with eyes and ears that can see and hear the whole world. “It’s for the Internet,” says one; “I don’t even have electricity,” says the other. Some of them have brought along their entire family to work, but the pay is so low it is impossible to save – even if they work around the clock until their hands are covered in blisters. It’s also a dangerous project, because they often dig up grenades. And then there are the foremen who withhold their pay. Some try to share their woes with their workmates, but every one of them is clearly on his own. Every action and transaction is a struggle, and any money saved increases the chance of survival. And onward rolls the reel, connecting places in the world unknown to these people.