Adapted from the novel of the same name by Marguerite Duras, Un Barrage Contre le Pacifique is directed by Rithy Panh (S21, La Machine de mort Khmère Rouge, TIFF 2003), who has turned to a classic work French literature to make a film about his native country. The legendary Isabelle Huppert stars as the matriarch of a small land-owning family in 1930s French Indochina (now Cambodia) who try to survive by working on rice fields located dangerously close to the ocean. Driven to fight against both nature and corrupt bureaucrats, she devises an imaginative scheme to build a dam against the sea with the help of the villagers.