Boyfriend is the title of a short film that is attracting many viewers’ attention.

Actually, the opening ceremony was scheduled to start at 5:30pm on May 28. When we showed up, the venue was quite full, but I was not so sure whether the mob was due to the theatre’s dimensions or the large number of participants. As a result, my friends had to sit on extra plastic chairs.  Unfortunately, I had to stand in the nearby aisles. Although it sounds a little bit clumsy, it was still okay.

The premier screening procedure was well-organised because it still flowed from the beginning through to the ending; athough, the masters of ceremony altered the guest speaker without alerting the audience and some technical errors occurred. The event was also honoured by Khieu Kanharith from the Ministry of Information and old film directors Moa Ayuth and Y Vong Heam as well as a young Khmer traditional dancer, Hun Pen.

Before the screening of the short film, the event also had a funny time with an Angkoor (improvised theatre) show.

Boyfriend is a kind of humorous and complicated story that relates to the situation in Cambodian society today, based on an original idea by Sorn Setepheap – a script by two young female and one male script writers. The film’s director is Phichit Rithea.

They are all members of the 4Ks (Kon Khmer Koun Khmer) – a self-atained term for young students and artists with majors focusing on film production and arts management, resulting from film-related projects in 2009 in Cambodia, by French-Cambodian filmmaker Davy Chou.

The short film Boyfriend is a story about a misunderstanding between a father and son. Because he was the only child in the family, Sophea always had arguments with his father and hung out with some friends – leading some to think he was gay – and he had a tough relationship with his father but was an outstanding student as well.

In fact, Sophea’s father and Sambath just had a simple friendship because Sophea’s father was proud of Sambath’s ability and personality. Therefore, at the end of film, they came to understand each other.

However, Boyfriend seemed not clear in providing the information, although it looked good in the area of technical camera work. To me, though I specialise in film making or cinematography, I still want to give my comments. I thought the film was done in a way that made it easy to estimate what was going on with protagonists, so it may have made the audience feel sleepy or less paying attention –  and the film was so short –  just around 18 minutes.

When they have other events, I hope they are more well-managed, including how many people should be in the film venue because a big mob can be hard to remove and can make it hard for people to go to the bathroom. I hope I can watch more such funny stories.

Boyfriend will be screening every Saturday evening at the French Cultural Centre (FCC) from 5pm on and the audience can join the fun for free.