First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (2017)

Angelina Jolie and Cambodia go way back to her days as Lara Croft. And since then, she has had a fascination with the country, adopting a Cambodian child and eventually being granted citizenship. This genuine connection with the country facilitated the production of a sincere film. Genocide is not an easy topic to cover. But she takes great care in crafting a tasteful film to aid in the country's ongoing healing process. Jolie should be commended for supporting Cambodia, hiring local cast and crew, and sharing their stories with a wider audience in Khmer.

The cast is largely made up of first-time actors, including 9-year-old Sreymoch Sareum. She is phenomenal for someone so young playing such a harrowing role. She shows real commitment, intensity and emotion. The movie is from her point of view. She is an innocent child, confused and unaware at first about what is happening around her. It is disorienting, dream-like. Jolie does not hold our hands--the audience is not omniscient, we know as much as our hero does. My main criticism is that there are some major gaps in the timeline. Obviously, this is not a minute by minute account of Loung Ung's experience during the Khmer Rouge regime. But beginning in the mine field scene, time seems to move along much faster without much explanation as to how we get from point A to point B. There are some really key points that I think audiences would be interested to know.

Rithy Panh serves as producer on the film. He is arguably Cambodia's most famous director. I wrote a paper on his film The Missing Picture a few years ago. He is a critical figure in Cambodia's reckoning with its past. In the face of such atrocities, communities need a way to heal. Confronting the pain through film, or through tribunals, is effective. Hopefully, Jolie's film will help too. 

The Missing Picture (L'Image Manquante) (2013)

This documentary film, recounting the director's experience in the Cambodian genocide, is inventive, original, innovative, and at the same time, simple.  This movie is Rithy Panh's artistic outlet in his midlife crisis.  At the age of 50, Panh reflects on his childhood experience under the Pol Pot regime.  At its core, this is his love letter to his art, film--it opens in a room full of burned film canisters. The only footage available from the period is propaganda, which was the only permitted use of cameras.  But to tell the real story, the story that Panh lived, Panh has to create his own images to fill in the void of the eponymous Missing Picture.  He does this by sculpting a multitude of carefully crafted clay figures, constructing still dioramas.  The contrast of the innocent, child-like sculptures versus the atrocities of the regime is devastating. These constructed images are imbued with a sense of reality and authority.  The best scenes are those that integrate the figurines into the actual footage. Panh's story is beautifully told through clear first person narration, with well placed pauses for dramatic effect.  Panh brilliantly uses his art to confront this dark time in history.