The Treis, family from the Bunong Tribe, are at the center of this film, initially a history of Cambodia that also becomes a story about the difficult journey of filmmaker Kim Tae-il and his family. The Treis are wary of the Kims pressuring them into religion, just as the French missionaries did, and the Kims are physically burdened by the Treis self-sufficiency. The film focuses on two families from vastly different environments who must co-exist. Maybe that is why <Wellang Trei> does not delve deeply into the lives of the Treis. Instead, the camera silently follows their everyday lives and illustrates their everyday exhaustion. The orally perpetuated tribal history is not owned by the static stillness of letters; it travels from fathers to sons, from mothers to daughters, melding experience and memory. Through the portrait of this family Kim reads history within the people and not people within history. Does the families’ capitalist-free encounter signify the fall of the people or does it signify hope? One quietly returns to this question. (LEE Seungmin)