Talking Shorts: Khmer queerness and bright afterlife by Magdalena Nieświec

The text was created as part of the Talking Shorts workshop during Ale Kino! Pro at the 43rd Ale Kino! Festival.

Magdalena Nieświec reviews „Grandma Mai Who Played Favourites”

Early April in a small Cambodian town starts with the sun shining high over the horizon and the light breeze brushing Grandma Nai’s silver hair. Yet that state of serene stillness breaks as a group of people begins gathering in the yard, carrying their restlessness and chaos with them. “Why is my family here?” Nai asks her neighbour over the fence. “It’s Tomb Sweeping Day”. It is a Chinese-rooted holiday that occurs fifteen days after the Spring Equinox (or according to the Chinese calendar – the first day of the fifth solar term, also named Qingming). Above all, it is a day when the relatives come to clean gravesites and make ritual offerings on their ancestors’ tombstones, and Grandma Nai… is one of them.

Directed by Chheangkea, a Cambodian-American filmmaker based in New York, Grandma Nai Who Played Favourites (2025), though filled with spirits, is not a horror about vengeful ghosts – so popular in Khmer cinema. Instead, it is a story about accepting one’s true self that leans more on the comedic side and portrays a theme less frequently presented in films: the struggle of a young queer man in Cambodia perceived through the perspective of the character’s late grandma. The queerness in this context is not framed as a dramatic revelation but as something portrayed through codes and gestures; through two worlds where one figures as invisible and the other as unperceived.

The family arrives at the gravesite to celebrate the Qingming festival. Grandma Nai (Saroeun Nay) sits by the table and quietly absorbs all the information about her family from the recent year. Her attention is caught by her grandson Meng (Bonrotanak Rith), whose recent girlfriend Pech (Sokun Theary Ty) is a hot topic. Everyone insists that Meng should get married soon – he’s slowly turning into an aging bachelor – being almost 29 years old while his aunt already had five children at that age. Having a girlfriend creates an illusion – and high hopes for everyone – that his marital status may change in the near future. Yet he doesn’t seem particularly comfortable with that idea. Following her instinct, Grandma Nai and her spirit neighbour jump into the car’s trunk and, leaving their peaceful afterlife behind, they go see what is really going on in the world of the living. They end up in the karaoke parlor where the family is about to finally meet the soon-to-be Meng’s fiancée.

The general aesthetics divide a film into two parts, giving it a distinct visual rhythm. The world of the dead – often perceived as dark and sad – is presented in bright natural light, highlighting a calm contentedness accompanied with loneliness. Whereas the world of the living has become its complete opposite: artificial lights, people seem lost and unsatisfied, despite the constant presence of life. Shyan Tan, responsible for the camera work, catches these details with meticulous precision. It all boils down to focusing on the long shots of Grandma’s shenanigans – like stealing sunglasses or throwing a microphone under her grandson’s feet. All of that allowed viewers to dive deeper into understanding how these two worlds work and especially, what feelings are hidden within them.

Chheangkea’s second short film doesn’t stray far from his first one, Skin Can Breathe (2022), which also touched on queer identity and experience. Despite being a core element of the narrative, these aspects are subtle. Meng doesn’t over-express his interest to the newly-met boy, but his eyes are wider when he looks at him and while singing a song “written to a man” he simply seems happier. The director avoids making these actions unnaturally flashy. Yet, by letting that desire surface through karaoke music and colourful lights, he allows queerness to express itself with its own vocabulary and shifts emphasis from the dialogue to well-recognized queer codes.

The understanding between characters, both dead and alive, also grows through unsaid words and gestures. Through pressure set by the family, Meng’s voice is being unheard by everyone. In a film populated by spirits, queerness becomes another kind of haunting, lingering at the edges of family conversation and appearing when no one is looking directly at it. No one besides Grandma Nai. She quietly discovers the closeted heart of her grandson and, singing to Pan Ron’s songs (a sexually liberated pop idol from the 70s), tries to heal it. And she does it with her long glances, correcting Meng’s shirt’s collar and wordless encouragement. Saroeun Nay carries that emotional weight throughout the film, relying solely on her facial expression and attention to detail. Through her diligent delivery one can feel the support flowing from her character and feel her understanding towards a “favourite” relative.

What ultimately emerges is a story about being seen. Chheangkea suggests that liberation often begins with these unspoken recognitions, just as Nai recognizes Meng. By leading the narrative through quietness, never through expressionless frames, and by following two characters who move from hiddenness to finally becoming visible, he delivers the message, paradoxically, loud and clear. It lingers with surprising weight – and that is, satisfyingly, more than enough.