Kaplouk is a moving image work filmed on Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap Lake. The film follows a seventy-five-year-old yay (the Khmer word for grandmother) who has spent most of her life on the water. The only time she left the lake was during the Khmer Rouge regime, when she was forced to labour on land. After the war, she returned and has remained ever since.

The work brings together her spoken reflections with slow observational imagery that follows her daily rhythms on the lake. As she moves through the water collecting and sorting water hyacinth, she reflects on loss, survival, and belonging.

The water hyacinth, known in Khmer as kaplouk, often appears in the film as both material and metaphor. Considered a weed, it drifts across the lake’s surface yet remains deeply shaped by the environment that carries it. Like the woman in the film, it moves with the currents of the lake while remaining closely tied to place.

Kaplouk reflects on labour, endurance, and the relationship between people and the environments that sustain them.