52 minutes Finding Face intimately details the phenomenon of acid violence against women through the controversial case of Tat Marina who – though publicly attacked at 16 – has yet to see her attackers brought to justice.
Tat Marina was a rising star in Phnom Penh’s emerging karaoke scene. Svay Sitha, advisor to the prime minister of Cambodia, noticed the beautiful teenager and quickly coerced her into a relationship. In 1999, at the age of sixteen, Marina was brutally attacked by Svay Sitha’s wife, who poured two liters of acid over her head in front of dozens of witnesses. Marina, horrifically disfigured, was granted juvenile asylum in the U.S.
After more than twenty operations, to treat burns covering forty percent of her body, Marina now lives in obscurity in the Boston area. Her family, threatened with physical harm by Svay Sitha, has remained mostly silent. Marina’s uncle in Cambodia, Kong Bong Chhoun, dared to write a book about the incident and was subsequently forced to flee the country with his entire family. Despite his backdrop of threats and intimidation, the Tat family has slowly emerged from their ilence. Marina has finally begun to think beyond fear and has chosen to break her long and nearly complete silence.
Finding Face investigates the fracturing of Marina’s family across transnational boundaries and documents the family’s disparate responses to the knowledge that none of Marina’s attackers have been arrested despite widespread knowledge of their identities.
A Skye Fitzgerald and Patti Duncan film.
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