Soriya, a talented manga artist, has returned to her ancestral home in Phnom Penh after the death of her mother. Her trip is meant to bring her closer to her long-lost family and inspire her work. However, things don't go as planned.
While living in Metta, a run-down Khmer Rouge-era housing complex, Soriya finds herself welcomed by her maternal relatives. But her waking hours in the apartment and its surroundings are filled with terrifying, bloody visions, almost as though she were a conduit for horrors of the past wanting to seep into the present.
Inrasothythep Neth and Sokyou Chea's psychological horror explores a personal and political past through the present, transforming a characterful space into an insidious environment. Surrounded by modern high-rises, this decrepit structure, with its brutalist architecture and peeling surfaces, is a relic from a dark period in history whose painful memories it has absorbed. In tracing Soriya’s ominous journey back to her roots, Tenement hints at a necessary reckoning with Cambodia's political past without overplaying its historical dimension. It's an impressive work from a woefully underrepresented national cinema.