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• 1 hour ago• Lim_Rothanaksambath
Phare Creative Studio Unveils ‘Skinny Fish,’ Cambodia’s Landmark Animated Feature
Phnom Penh, Cambodia — Phare Creative Studio has officially unveiled Skinny Fish, a 92-minute animated feature film set in the heart of Cambodia. Grounded in Khmer folklore and the heavy realities of human trafficking, the project marks a historic milestone as one of the country’s first home-grown animated features aiming for global theatrical distribution.
The film follows Rithy, a young boy from the Mekong River basin born with an otherworldly affinity for water. When severe hardship strikes his family, Rithy is sold into forced labor on the Cambodian coast, where he is coerced into high-risk deep-sea diving to harvest treasures for profit. The narrative contrasts the sacred life of the Mekong with the darkness of ocean exploitation, offering a powerful story of survival, human dignity, and resilience brought to life by an 18-member Cambodian creative team.
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Beyond its artistic ambitions, Skinny Fish represents a unique social enterprise model built on community empowerment. Phare Creative Studio operates as the commercial arm of Phare Ponleu Selpak, an organization that has provided free arts, music, and performance education to marginalized Cambodian youth in Battambang since 1996. Most of the animators behind the project are themselves alumni of the non-profit's Visual and Applied Arts School.
Prior to producing this landmark feature, the studio spent over 16 years building its visual expertise through human-centered communication campaigns for major international organizations, including UNICEF, UNDP, WaterAid, and the World Food Programme.
Phare Creative Studio has launched a global Kickstarter campaign to secure final post-production resources and bring the film to international standards. Beyond completing the project, global support and film proceeds directly fund training scholarships for incoming students at Phare’s arts school, ensuring that historical suffering continues to be transformed into creative and economic opportunity.
Reported by The Khmer Daily network
The film follows Rithy, a young boy from the Mekong River basin born with an otherworldly affinity for water. When severe hardship strikes his family, Rithy is sold into forced labor on the Cambodian coast, where he is coerced into high-risk deep-sea diving to harvest treasures for profit. The narrative contrasts the sacred life of the Mekong with the darkness of ocean exploitation, offering a powerful story of survival, human dignity, and resilience brought to life by an 18-member Cambodian creative team.
.Beyond its artistic ambitions, Skinny Fish represents a unique social enterprise model built on community empowerment. Phare Creative Studio operates as the commercial arm of Phare Ponleu Selpak, an organization that has provided free arts, music, and performance education to marginalized Cambodian youth in Battambang since 1996. Most of the animators behind the project are themselves alumni of the non-profit's Visual and Applied Arts School.
Prior to producing this landmark feature, the studio spent over 16 years building its visual expertise through human-centered communication campaigns for major international organizations, including UNICEF, UNDP, WaterAid, and the World Food Programme.
Phare Creative Studio has launched a global Kickstarter campaign to secure final post-production resources and bring the film to international standards. Beyond completing the project, global support and film proceeds directly fund training scholarships for incoming students at Phare’s arts school, ensuring that historical suffering continues to be transformed into creative and economic opportunity.
Reported by The Khmer Daily network
