Summary Of Behind The Beautiful Forevers

The documentary begins with the wedding of two Cambodian people. Moon, the bride, works in health care. She supports her family and pays for her brother and sister’s education. She met her husband Bunsan through her work. Their families are both very poor, so they had to pay for their wedding with help from their friends. Every weekend Moon goes back to her village to help her family with their rice field. It is hard to support a family with a rice field. Even worse, companies are buying many of the fields in Cambodia which causes people to lose the food and income they were getting from them. The government can sell people’s land whenever they want, so there is a lot of uncertainty about whether and when people will lose their land. This issue is referred to as “land grabbing”.
Many Cambodians now have to import rice, and it sometimes is of lesser quality and sprayed with pesticides unlike what they formerly grew themselves.
Many families have filed suit against the companies that took their land, but due to corruption in the courts they did not win. This reminds me of the corruption in India presented in Behind the Beautiful Forevers. People who lose their lands are often forced to work in plantations under horrible conditions and with little pay. Referring to the title of the documentary, the companies are the elephants and the farmers are the grass. I do not think it is right for the companies to take land that is rightfully others. If they want the land, they should make proper offers to the families that own
them. This documentary was very enlightening. It was heartbreaking to see people’s homes and land taken from them and reduced to nothing, even though they fought so hard to keep them.