Soun Rottana
Soun is a war veteran, landmine survivor and a former Khmer Rouge child soldier. He fought for almost fifteen years. He is a consummate and engaging storyteller who earned a 100% rating on Trip Advisor while at the Cambodian War Remnant Museum.
Silong Dork
Silong has worked as a professional tour guide for three years since joining Ayana Journeys in 2017 and has worked in a variety of roles as an administrator/receptionist at the Angkor Howard Hotel, to supervision of tour administration, to co-leading educational adventures for students and the management of a war museum in Siem Reap.
He is currently project managing several study tour initiatives and excels in logistics management. Silong comes with a wealth of experience in management and development work and has spent time as a researcher and evaluator for a variety of organizations and worked alongside GIZ in sustainable agricultural improvement projects throughout Cambodia.
In his spare time he is a passionate advocate for others, has lectured at Angkor University, taught English in the Krolanh Districh, volunteers with a range of local social impact projects, and has acted as a volunteer mentor. He lives in Siem Reap and enjoys good coffee, conversation and riding his bike through rural Cambodia.
Silong Dork
Silong has worked as a professional tour guide for three years since joining Ayana Journeys in 2017 and has worked in a variety of roles as an administrator/receptionist at the Angkor Howard Hotel, to supervision of tour administration, to co-leading educational adventures for students and the management of a war museum in Siem Reap.
He is currently project managing several study tour initiatives and excels in logistics management. Silong comes with a wealth of experience in management and development work and has spent time as a researcher and evaluator for a variety of organizations and worked alongside GIZ in sustainable agricultural improvement projects throughout Cambodia.
In his spare time he is a passionate advocate for others, has lectured at Angkor University, taught English in the Krolanh Districh, volunteers with a range of local social impact projects, and has acted as a volunteer mentor. He lives in Siem Reap and enjoys good coffee, conversation and riding his bike through rural Cambodia.
Vichheka Sok
Savina Sirik
Savina has conducted extensive fieldwork throughout Cambodia, working to document the experiences of survivors of Cambodia’s Democratic Kampuchea period.
She has worked for the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) since 2004 and has served as team leader of a variety of projects, including the Transitional Justice, Museum of Memory, and Living Documents projects. She has also served as the Center’s planned Museum of Memory and is the author of the monograph Everyday Experiences of Genocide Survivors in Landscapes of
Violence in Cambodia (DC-Cam, 2016).
Savina is a doctoral candidate in Peace and Development Research at the University of Gothenburg School of Global Studies, holds an M.A. in Peace and Reconciliation Studies from Coventry University, UK, and an M.A. in Geography from Kent State University, USA. Her research interests include genocide memorialization, memory, narratives, and resistance.
David has been producing a variety of shows, events, videos and campaigns for many years now as the founder and director of SoChange, a social enterprise that works with the corporate and NGO community in leadership development, innovation and entrepreneurship.
He holds a Masters degree in Philosophy from the University of Guelph and has completed postgraduate work in International Development and teaches in the business school at Humber College in Toronto. He is a writer, speaker, entertainer, academic and social change consultant.
David hosts a podcast called Face2Face on Rabble.ca that focuses on the film with a particular focus on documentaries. He is a featured interviewer at Hot Docs and the Toronto Internal Film Festival and has published over 400 interviews.
He is also a professional magician and co-producer and creator of the award winning children’s television show Spellz. In 2008 David created the Mosquitoes Suck Tour – a global youth initiative that entertains, educates and advocates. He founded yChange, a social justice conference that has been held in Toronto, Vancouver and Hong Kong.
David was named a Global Hero by Verge magazine in 2009 and recently published his first two books Irreconcilable Differences and Real Change is Incremental, which was nominated recently for a word guild culture award.
You can find our more about him here.
Nathanael Draper
Nathanael Draper is a Vancouver based filmmaker with commercials and short films of various genres to his name.
Growing up in Toronto, the magic of cinema was a constant fascination to him. At the age of sixteen, he was approached by Machinima.com to enter into a director partnership program where he created original shorts using video games. His most widely viewed film from this period was How to Operate a Vending Machine, animated using the Source Engine. It was Youtube’s second most viewed video worldwide on its day of release.
After graduating high school, Nate relocated to Vancouver to study film production at VFS.
Recently he’s directed web content for Canadian charities including the Alzheimer Society of Ontario and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Other projects include a music video for his own musical group FrĀmz as well as a short film titled Yellow Can which was selected by the CMS Vatavaran Environment & Wildlife International Film Festival in 2017.
His most recent film ‘Shiraz’, inspired by his own journey to the middle east in 2014 was filmed in Iran and Vancouver and is currently finishing post-production. It is set to hit the film festival scene later this year. He believes that the most engaging stories not only entertain but also challenge audiences to re-examine our self-perceptions and interactions in the world around us.
Doug Karr
Doug Karr has been creating original independent films since 1997. Karr’s credits include narrative shorts Tiny Dancer, Anniversary Present, The Straitjacket Lottery and the award winning documentaries LSD25, The June Bug Symphony, Lifecycles: a story of AIDS in Malawi, and The Face of AIDS. His 2009 short Ten For Grandpa premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and has gone on to screen at over 50 international film festivals, winning multiple awards.
The writer of 11 feature length screenplays, his script My Thermonuclear Family won the Grand Prize at the 2007 Filmmakers International Screenplay Competition, and a feature film version of Tiny Dancer just received development financing from Canadian studio Movie Central/Chorus with Karr attached to pen the screenplay.
His films have been seen by audiences around the world and on numerous television channels. Karr’s debut feature, Art Machine, stars Joseph Cross (Milk, Flags of Our Fathers, Running with Scissors), Jessica Szohr (Gossip Girl, Piranha 3D) and Joey Lauren Adams (Chasing Amy, Big Daddy). Karr is director of Pie Face Pictures in NYC, with recent commercial clients that include Aéropostale, Chicos, The Rockefeller Foundation and Juicy Couture. Karr is represented by Epicenter Management.
Simon Taplin
Simon has been photographing professionally for the past 25 years after graduating in photography from Bournemouth & Poole College of art and design in the United Kingdom With a Bachelors of Art Degree in Photography.
“While being classically trained in a studio environment, I’m highly experimental. I’ll often collide contemporary mediums and new technologies with traditional methods, thus creating extraordinary photographic techniques such as digital pinhole photography, or printing digital images with platinum palladium, an early 19th century print process and working with modified cameras”.
The results speak for themselves; his client list includes Unilever, P&G, Nokia, Heineken to name a few and his industry award list includes D&AD, The One Show, Communication Arts , Archive and recently published in One Eyeland awards, as one of the best photographers 2019.
“Having moved away from controlled studio environments, I mostly concentrate on shooting people and lifestyle work inspired by the times in which we live. I enjoy the freedom and the spontaneity that it presents”.
This can be seen within his imagery conveying empathy and a great sense of engagement with the viewer. With empathy on one side of his work, he also has a cheeky fun side to his photography creating visual parodies of life.
Shooting Internationally keeps Simon’s concepts and style fresh and in touch visually with today’s global living and lifestyle.
Hirra Farooqi
Hirra Farooqi is a journalist and the founding Director of the Muslim International Film Festival. Hirra served as the Production Assistant and Cultural Advisor for The Secret Marathon film. She is also the Toronto Race Director and National Communication Coordinator for The Secret 3K, an annual run/walk held across Canada and around the world in over 23 countries to promote gender equality and safe and inclusive spaces. Hirra is currently working on producing her own documentaries based on minority rights in her countries of origin, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hirra currently does free-lance work in Social Media Marketing and is a free-lance Producer for online shows.
George Turnbull
George Turnbull is an award-winning stage and screen scholar and practitioner. He holds a B.A. and M.A., and is currently completing his government-funded doctoral research in Cinema and Media Studies. He is a recipient of the prestigious Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In addition, Turnbull has held appointments as the Graduate Student Representative of the Film Studies Association of Canada (FSAC-ACÉC) and as the President of the Graduate Film Student Association at York University. Currently, he sits on the Editorial Board of Canada’s leading dance publication, The Dance Current.
Turnbull looks forward to contributing his knowledge and expertise as a Cambodian filmmaker and scholar to the team of, “Broken Courage.”
