Movie: Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers

  • HomePage

  • Overview

    During the last half-century, Cambodia has witnessed genocide, decades of war and the collapse of social order. Now, documentary filmmaker Rithy Panh looks at an irreparable tragedy that is less visible, yet no less pervasive: the spiritual death that results when young women are forced into prostitution. Angry and impassioned, PAPER CANNOT WRAP UP EMBERS presents the searing stories of poor Asian women whose lives were violated and their destinies destroyed when their bodies were turned into items of sexual commerce.

  • Release Date

    2007-03-31

  • Average

    6.2

  • Rating:

    3.1 starts
  • Tagline

  • Genres

  • Languages:

  • Keywords

Recommendations Movies

Fuck
64%

Fuck(en)

2006-11-10

A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.

Target Number One
62%

Target Number One(en)

2020-07-10

Ex heroin junkie, Daniel Léger, gets involved in a drug deal with the wrong people for the wrong reasons. When the deal goes sour, Daniel gets thrown into a Thai prison and slapped with a 100-year sentence. While he tries to survive his Bangkok incarceration, the news of his conviction captures the attention of Globe and Mail journalist Victor Malarek, who decides to go after the shady undercover cops responsible for wrongly accusing Daniel.

Foxy Brown
63%

Foxy Brown(en)

1974-04-05

A voluptuous black woman takes a job as a high-class prostitute in order to get revenge on the mobsters who murdered her boyfriend.

Whitney: Can I Be Me
65%

Whitney: Can I Be Me(en)

2017-04-24

The life and tragic death of Whitney Houston.

Take Your Pills
65%

Take Your Pills(en)

2018-03-09

In a hypercompetitive world, drugs like Adderall offer students, athletes, coders and others a way to do more -- faster and better. But at what cost?

Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story
61%

Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story(en)

2025-12-30

Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.

Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers
67%

Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers(en)

2025-10-29

Aileen Wuornos remains a rarity: a female serial killer. From childhood abuse to death-row revelations, this documentary revisits her life and crimes.

City of Ghosts
58%

City of Ghosts(en)

2002-09-10

A con man who is on the run from law enforcement in the U.S. travels to Cambodia to collect his share in an insurance scam but discovers more than he bargained for.

Naqoyqatsi
61%

Naqoyqatsi(en)

2002-09-02

A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.

Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
68%

Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids(en)

2004-12-08

Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.

X-Rated: The Greatest Adult Movies of All Time
64%

X-Rated: The Greatest Adult Movies of All Time(en)

2015-02-06

The evolution of adult cinema through the most influential films in history, a journey that begins in the 1970s and ends nowadays. An in-depth analysis of the success of the most prestigious erotic films, their impact on industry and society, and their influence on cinema and contemporary culture.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated
71%

This Film Is Not Yet Rated(en)

2006-01-25

Kirby Dick's provocative documentary investigates the secretive and inconsistent process by which the Motion Picture Association of America rates films, revealing the organization's underhanded efforts to control culture. Dick questions whether certain studios get preferential treatment and exposes the discrepancies in how the MPAA views sex and violence.

Streetwise
75%

Streetwise(en)

1984-12-07

This documentary about teenagers living on the streets in Seattle began as a magazine article. The film follows nine teenagers who discuss how they live by panhandling, prostitution, and petty theft.

Rise of the Footsoldier
63%

Rise of the Footsoldier(en)

2007-09-07

Rise of the Footsoldier follows the inexorable rise of Carlton Leach from one of the most feared generals of the football terraces to becoming a member of a notorious gang of criminals who rampaged their way through London and Essex in the late eighties and early nineties.

Gilbert
67%

Gilbert(en)

2017-04-20

The life and career of one of comedy's most inimitable modern voices, Mr. Gilbert Gottfried.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
72%

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed(en)

2022-11-23

The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.

A Plastic Ocean
75%

A Plastic Ocean(en)

2016-09-22

A documentary focused on plastic pollution in the world's oceans.

Hot Girls Wanted
61%

Hot Girls Wanted(en)

2015-01-24

A first-ever look at the realities of the professional “amateur” porn world and the steady stream of 18-to-19-year old girls entering into it.

Miss Representation
69%

Miss Representation(en)

2011-01-20

The film MISS REPRESENTATION exposes how American youth are being sold the concept that women and girls’ value lies in their youth, beauty and sexuality. Explores the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America, and challenges the media's limited portrayal of what it means to be a powerful woman. It’s time to break that cycle of mistruths.

Perfect Stranger
58%

Perfect Stranger(en)

2007-04-11

A journalist goes undercover to ferret out businessman Harrison Hill as her best friend's killer. Posing as one of his temps, she enters into a game of online cat-and-mouse.

Similar Movies

The Fall of the I-Hotel
80%

The Fall of the I-Hotel(en)

1983-06-15

The Fall of the I-Hotel brings to life the battle for housing in San Francisco. The brutal eviction of the International Hotel's tenants culminated a decade of spirited resistance to the razing of Manilatown. The Fall of the I-Hotel works on several levels. It not only documents the struggle to save the I-Hotel, but also gives an overview of Filipino American history.

Buy Bye Beauty
20%

Buy Bye Beauty(en)

2001-01-01

Buy Bye Beauty is a 2001 documentary film by Swedish director and performance artist Pål Hollender. The film is about the way Latvian sex industry and its being fueled by businessmen and sex tourists from Sweden visiting Riga. The film was shot in Riga in July 2000. The narration of the film is in English, with interviews conducted in Russian and Latvian.

Land Without Bread
71%

Land Without Bread(es)

1933-12-01

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.

Megacities
66%

Megacities(en)

1998-08-12

Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.

Mustang: The House That Joe Built
36%

Mustang: The House That Joe Built(en)

1977-07-27

A documentary about the girls of the Mustang Ranch, a legal brothel in Nevada.

Debt
63%

Debt(es)

2004-10-07

DEBT is the story of a frantic pursuit: the search for the responsible for the televised cry of hunger of Barbara Flores, an eight-year-old Argentinean girl. Buenos Aires, Washington, the IMF, the World Bank and Davos; corruption and the international bureaucratic lack of interest.

Chicken Ranch
51%

Chicken Ranch(en)

1983-05-01

Documentary on the "Chicken Ranch," a legal Nevada brothel.

The Journey
46%

The Journey(sv)

1987-02-24

Peter Watkins' global look at the impact of military use of nuclear technology and people's perception of it, as well as a meditation on the inherent bias of the media, and documentaries themselves.

West End Jungle
46%

West End Jungle(en)

1961-12-01

1961 documentary about the history and seedy reality of the sex industry in London's Soho.

Augusta
90%

Augusta(en)

1976-01-01

This short documentary is the portrait of an 88-year-old woman who lives alone in a log cabin without running water or electricity in the Williams Lake area of British Columbia. The daughter of a Shuswap chief, Augusta lost her Indian status as the result of a marriage to a white man. She recalls past times, but lives very much in the present. Self-sufficient, dedicated to her people, she spreads warmth wherever she moves, with her songs and her harmonica.

Aufstand im Bordell - Frauenhandel um 1900
80%

Aufstand im Bordell - Frauenhandel um 1900(de)

2024-03-05

In the spring of 1902, Viennese working-class daughter Marie König runs away from her beating father and is lured into a high-class brothel by an agent. Instead of the promised self-determined life "with horse-drawn carriage rides and silk dresses", she experiences closed doors, violence and exploitation. Only after years of agony does Marie confide in the journalist Emil Bader, who makes the conditions in the brothel public and takes the owner, Regine Riehl, to court.

Methadonia
51%

Methadonia(en)

2005-10-06

Shot over the course of 18 months in New York City's Lower East Side, METHADONIA sheds light on the inherent flaws of legal methadone treatments for heroin addiction by profiling eight addicts, in various stages of recovery and relapse, who attend the New York Center for Addiction Treatment Services (NYCATS).

Fish Story
20%

Fish Story(cn)

2013-11-16

J and Jacky are good friends who attend the same school. J is from a single-parent family, and will be taken care by Jacky’s family whenever his mother has to return to Mainland to renew her visa; such kind of story is not an isolated case. These families have been uprooted for a “better future” in Hong Kong, but is this “future” that the children really long to have? A Chinese saying: “How does one understand the joy of fish, if one is not a fish?” Will the adults really understand what the children want?

Brasilianische Protokolle 2
90%

Brasilianische Protokolle 2(de)

1992-02-10

Documentary film about a slum community on the outskirts of Recife, a major city in northeastern Brazil. A portrait of life in extreme poverty and lawlessness: men without work, hopeless women, hungry and sick children.

Homeland
75%

Homeland(en)

2000-10-20

Following four Lakota families over three years, Homeland explores what it takes for the Lakota community to build a better future in the face of tribal and government corruption, scarce housing, unemployment, and alcoholism. Intimate interviews with a spiritual leader, a grandmother, an artist, and a community activist from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation reveal how each survives through family ties, cultural tradition, humor, and a palpable yearning for self-reliance and personal freedom.

Dokkoi! Songs from the Bottom
0%

Dokkoi! Songs from the Bottom(ja)

1975-05-24

After the waning of the protests in Sanrizuka, Ogawa Pro started questioning the future of the collective and looking for other subjects to film. Following the method developed in the previous films, the filmmakers moved to the slum of Kotobuchi in the port city of Yokohama, where more than 6000 people were struggling to get by without any means of survival, exposed to industrial accidents and diseases. The result is one of the most moving films produced by the collective, a series of beautifully filmed portraits, voicing the silenced stories and songs of a group of people living in this community. Credit: ICA London

Philip K Dick: A Day in the Afterlife
68%

Philip K Dick: A Day in the Afterlife(en)

1994-04-09

A poetic look at the life and legacy of legendary author Philip K. Dick (1928-1982), who wrote over a hundred short stories and 44 novels of mind-bending sci-fi, exploring themes of authority, drugs, theology, mental illness and much more.

The Prostitutes of Lyon Speak
78%

The Prostitutes of Lyon Speak(fr)

1975-01-01

Documentary about the Lyon sex workers who occupied the church of St. Nizier on June 3, 1975.

Pigerne på Halmtorvet
56%

Pigerne på Halmtorvet(da)

1992-01-01

Rain Falls from Earth: Surviving Cambodia's Darkest Hour
0%

Rain Falls from Earth: Surviving Cambodia's Darkest Hour(en)

On April 17, 1975, the face of Cambodia would forever be changed. As Khmer Rouge soldiers marched into the capital city of Phnom Penh, the unsuspecting people of Cambodia had little idea they would be forced into a living nightmare that would last nearly four years. Rain Falls From Earth is a story of courage, a story of survival and a story of eventual triumph over the Communist regime that was responsible for the deaths of over two million people. The voices of many Cambodians are heard as they convey their thoughts, ideas and emotions - the very things they were forced to abandon in the "killing fields" of Cambodia. Their stories are an eyewitness account to genocide.