Kou Voravong
Kou Voravong grew up in Savannakhet and pursued a primary education there. He obtained the « certificat d'études primaires complémentaire indochinois » - Certificate of Indochinese Additional Primary Studies - (CEPCI) in 1930, went afterward to Vientiane and began his first-secondary-school year at the Collège Auguste Pavie. But because of a conflict which opposed him to French Colonial administration, his adopted father was sentenced to prison that same year. As reaction to this situation, Kou Voravong left school and returned to Savannakhet. As an out-of-school teenager, he practiced sports, especially soccer.
Kosal Khiev
Kosal Khiev was born in Khao-I-Dang in 1980. He grew up in Santa Ana, California. At 16, he was involved in a gang shoot-out. He was deported to Cambodia in 2011 after being released from prison. He began experimenting with poetry while in solitary confinement. In Phnom Penh, he met filmmaker Masahiro Sugano, and multimedia artist Anida Yoeu Ali, who made the movie Cambodian Son about Khiev's life.