Downtime: Local real estate agents team up on ‘Chasing Cambodia’ cycling doc

Johnny Phan in ‘Chasing Cambodia,’ a documentary film about his reconnection with his family’s roots while competing with the Cambodian National Cycling Team. (Screenshot)

When Johnny Phan decided he needed to reconnect with his family’s Cambodian roots, he had no idea his trip to the other side of the globe would end up leading him to a spot on the Cambodian National Cycling Team – or that the experience would be documented on film.

Clockwise from top left: Joey Schihl, Kyle Jonas, Ben Saunders and Phan. (Images courtesy Joey Schihl)

His friend Joey Schihl, a fellow real estate agent who worked with Phan for years at One South Realty Group, had been looking to get back into documentary filmmaking since studying it at VCU, where he and Phan met.

When Phan got invited to compete with the team in the Southeast Asian Games and the Cambodian National Cycling Championship, Schihl knew he had found his inspiration.

Schihl reached out to Ben Saunders, another VCU alum who had made a doc with Schihl years earlier and had since co-founded Adelicia Co., a video production firm in Nashville. Saunders and business partner Kyle Jonas signed on to co-direct and shoot the film, and Schihl produced it with support from VPM, the public media nonprofit and local PBS affiliate.

The result is “Chasing Cambodia,” an hourlong film that follows Phan’s journey and his shot at competitive cycling at the pro level.

The doc has been shown at film festivals in Southeast Asia and the U.S. and will have its Richmond premiere Saturday afternoon with a free showing at The Byrd Theater.

An amateur competitive cyclist for years, Phan, 39, said getting the chance to race at the pro level was an achievement he never expected to make.

“Going into the pro ranks was a dream, but also something that I realized was pretty slim, given my age, when I got started, and the fact that I was about to have a kid when they told me,” Phan said. “It’s always something that’s been in the back of my mind, but I didn’t think it would actually happen.”

Phan being interviewed about ‘Chasing Cambodia.’

Granted, he added with a laugh: “I didn’t make a ton of money. I barely broke even on the trip and everything with that. But I can say I got paid to do what I love.”

A first-generation Cambodian-American, Phan grew up in Richmond’s suburbs after his parents, Cambodian refugees, arrived in the 1970s to escape the Khmer Rouge, a communist political group responsible for the four-year Cambodian genocide that saw up to 3 million people killed.

Attending school in western Henrico, Phan said he suppressed his Cambodian heritage and didn’t give it much mind until a few years ago, when he and his wife Maddy planned to have their first child.

“I got to this ‘Oh crap’ moment, like, I’ve pushed this away for so long, how do I share this? How do I pass these really cool cultural aspects of who I am onto my kids when I’ve spent so much of my life pushing it away?

“That was a big part of this journey, and that’s where the title ‘Chasing Cambodia’ came from,” he said. “You’re chasing somebody on a bike, you’re chasing the guy who’s winning on the bike, but there’s (also) this chasing, this longing for this culture that I’ve pushed away.”

Phan and wife Maddy on their Cambodia trip in 2020.

The couple made the 30-hour trek to Cambodia, and while there, Phan connected with a cycling friend of a cycling friend who rode on the country’s national team and told Phan that he should join the team. Formal conversations followed, and after a few months, Phan was on the team and racing in the 2022 SEA Games in Vietnam.

“I sent them basically a resume of results of races that I had in the U.S. at the elite level, and that was pretty much good enough,” Phan said, laughing. “Cycling is getting bigger there, but it’s not this huge thing, so I have to realize the reality of I fell into a niche sport where there weren’t a lot of people doing it.”

Nonetheless, Phan, who was 36 at the time and the oldest among his teammates, held up his end.

“I could hang. I wasn’t out of my element. I wasn’t getting my teeth kicked in and didn’t get dropped in distance and rolling in last place,” he said. “My takeaway was this is a really high level, and as a 36-year-old amateur cyclist, I was there and I could do it and I could hang. From a racing career standpoint, that was really gratifying.”

Along the way, between his initial trip with Maddy in 2020, pre-pandemic, to the bike race two years later, Phan said he underwent a cultural awakening – a “healing,” he said – that he never intended to be put on film.

Filming at Bryan Park.

“I didn’t want to make a documentary out of this. This is nothing I wanted to film,” he said. “It was just Joey being like, ‘Hey, let’s do this, I want a creative outlet, and we talked about this when we were in college.’ So I was like, ‘Rock on, let’s do it.’”

Filming stretched over months and wrapped up last fall. The group traveled to Cambodia to film Phan competing in last year’s Cambodian National Cycling Championship, and the doc also shows him training in Richmond in weekly races held at Bryan Park.

Local studio Overcoast Music + Sound handled composition, licensing and post-production for the film, and Schihl said they raised $5,000 to produce it with support from VPM and other donors, such as David Blanchard, owner of Blanchard’s Coffee.

“VPM was our biggest partner and they donated a fair amount of change over the years to help us get it across the finish line,” Schihl said.

“The core of it is an identity piece. The race was the vessel to get the story out, but the real story is learning about yourself.”

While he said he didn’t seek it out, Phan said he is pleased with the film that came out of his journey.

Phan with his Specialized bike and equipment.

“I think it’s pretty incredible, given the budget we were working with. VPM was a huge help to making it all happen,” Phan said. “Joey has been an incredible producer and our biggest logistics guy, and he is so good at that. Ben and Kyle, the videographers, are just wizards behind the camera and incredible storytellers.

“I feel like I didn’t really do much. I just kind of lived my life and they were there. Kudos to them for making an incredible film.”

PBS and American Public Television plan to broadcast “Chasing Cambodia” later this year, and the film will be available to stream on PBS’s app later this month.

Saturday’s showing at The Byrd starts at 2:45 p.m. and includes a panel discussion with the producers and Phan. Tickets for the free event can be found here.

This is the latest installment in our Downtime series, which focuses on businesspeople’s pursuits outside of the office. If you, a co-worker or someone you know around town has a unique way of passing time off the clock, submit suggestions to Jonathan@RichmondBizSense.com. For previous installments of Downtime, click here.

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