Filming with a princess

How the TV5 Monde documentary France-Cambodge, Je t'aime, moi aussi came together.

By Sovandarapor (James) Kong · 2026-05-06 · Craft

In March 2026, Emmanuel Sheffer flew into Phnom Penh to film a segment for "France-Cambodge, Je t'aime, moi aussi" for TV5 Monde. He needed access to a member of the Cambodian royal family. I made the call.

The principal subject was Princess Jenna Norodom. Princess Bophary Norodom was the authorising figure. Princess Rattana Norodom was in the conversation. Jenna's team, Momo and Mr. Song, ran the day. My job was to get all of them saying yes to the same project at the same time, and then to make sure the project that turned up resembled the one they had agreed to.

This is the part of the work that does not look like work. It looks like dinners. It looks like very long WhatsApp threads. It looks like a producer asking, for the third time, whether wardrobe has been approved.

What a producer needs from a fixer in Cambodia is fairly simple to list and hard to deliver. Access that holds when the day slips. Somebody who can tell him what is actually happening in the room, rather than the smoothed English version. And somebody who will say, before he asks, that the schedule he sent will not survive contact with Tuesday, and here is the one that will.

What a princess needs is different. To be filmed as a person rather than a costume. A final cut that keeps to the agreement instead of drifting into monarchy-as-curiosity for a European audience. And a result her family can be proud of, which is a higher bar than either of the other two.

Most days those sets of needs sit together comfortably enough. Occasionally they do not, and the job becomes finding the version of the project where they still do.

The shoot went well. Emmanuel is a serious documentarian rather than a tourist with a camera, and Jenna gave him a real interview instead of a polite one. Momo and Mr. Song worked with us rather than around us, which is not always how these go. The piece airs to a French and Francophone audience, most of whom will be getting their first extended look at modern Cambodia through a Cambodian face.

My name is not in the credits. That is roughly the point of the job.