In 1999 the first fibre optics cable was laid across Cambodia. Rithy Panh recounts several weeks in the life of a poor Cambodian family, survivors of an enormous genocide - a woman, a disabled ex-service man and seven children, the eldest only 10 years old - working as labourers digging the trench for the communications superhighway. Armed with rudimentary hoes and paid by the metre, they work day and night. They cannot afford electricity let alone reap the rewards of new technology. In the course of their work they unearth the remains of the war like mines, bombs and human remains, evidence of Cambodia's traumatic history. As they do, they are forced to confront their own past, their fears and their memories. Using the cable as a symbol for the past meeting the future, Panh's moving and haunting film asks: can they ever face their losses and can Cambodian identity be reborn?