Risking Light

Risking Light is a 2018 documentary by Dawn Mikkelson that follows three survivors of violence, including in Cambodia, from grief toward forgiveness.

Film details
Director	Dawn Mikkelson
Format	Feature
Film type	Documentary
Running time	87 minutes
Screened at	Cambodia Town Film Festival
Subjects	Film & Moving Image

Synopsis

The film tells three stories from the streets of Minneapolis, the Aboriginal lands of Australia and the killing fields of Cambodia. Mary Johnson grieves a son who was murdered in Minneapolis. Debra Hocking, one of Australia's Aboriginal Stolen Generations, was taken from her family as a baby under a government program to relocate Aboriginal children. Kilong Ung survived the Khmer Rouge regime, which forced him into child labor as a boy, and later chose to forgive the people who killed his family. The film follows how each of them turned grief and anger into forgiveness, and it returns often to restorative justice: justice as a process that lets victims and survivors work through pain and heal.

Production and credits

Mikkelson met Mary Johnson and O'Shea Israel five years before she made the film, and she has said that meeting shaped the project. The crew then traveled to Cambodia and later to Australia to record more stories of forgiveness. Mikkelson has said she wanted to explore forgiveness in several cultural and religious settings rather than tie it to one religion. Part of the footage was shot in Khmer and was translated and transcribed in post-production. Beyond the feature, the material became three short films on the U.S., Cambodian and Australian stories and a series of web videos.

It was Mikkelson's fifth feature documentary. She won an Emmy Award in 2015 and was a McKnight Filmmaking Fellow in 2010, and she founded Emergence Pictures, the Minnesota documentary company that produced the film. The festival listing credits Mikkelson as executive producer and director and Miranda Wilson as producer; the festival's lineup announcement credits Mikkelson as director and producer and Wilson as executive producer. Lu Lippold was consulting producer, and Matt Ehling was associate producer and U.S. cinematographer. Jesse Roesler filmed in Cambodia, Russell Hawkins in Tasmania and Emma Paine in Sydney. Peter Rhodes and Mikkelson edited the film with Doug Blush as consulting editor, Chris Strouth composed the original music, Kevin Beacham was music supervisor and John Sims designed the sound. Post-production was funded in part by a Seed&Spark campaign that raised $60,210, after an earlier Kickstarter campaign, with foundation support from the Fetzer Institute.

The documentary was made in the United States, Cambodia and Australia, and it is in English with a running time of 87 minutes.

Release and reception

Risking Light premiered in competition at the Cinequest Film & VR Festival, and the Cambodia Film Commission lists its release date as March 3, 2018. That year it also screened at the Cleveland International Film Festival, the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival and the Chania Film Festival. It won Best of Fest at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival in 2018 and Audience Favorite at the Big Water Film Festival in 2019, and it screened at the Cambodia International Film Festival in 2019.

The film was an official selection of the 2018 Cambodia Town Film Festival, presented by Project Angkor and Khmer Arts Academy. It screened on September 16, 2018, at the Art Theatre in Long Beach, followed by a question-and-answer session with Mikkelson. KPBS TV broadcast it on January 5, 2021.

References