Born in Phnom Penh and now based in Paris, the documentary filmmaker, Rithy Panh has made a life’s work of enshrining in memory the tragedy that befell the Cambodian people in the latter decades of the 20th century. Nearly two million Cambodians are estimated to have died, from starvation and extermination, in Cambodia’s Killing Fields between 1975 and 1979. Panh himself spent those years in a forced labour camp before escaping to a refugee camp in Thailand in 1979, at the age of 15. He made his way to France the following year, where he ultimately entered L’Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques (IDHEC), France’s national film school.
In 1999, the construction for the laying of the first optical fibre cable in South east Asia is now crossing Cambodia from the Thai border to the frontier with Vietnam. The cable is to link up with another running from Europe along Silk Road. The worksite provides employment opportunities for many Cambodians. Peasants with no land, demobilized solders and families…
This is not just one more film about the monuments of Angkor, their history or their architecture. This film is about the people who live there. An inside view, in the shadow of the temples and the great kapok trees, an inhabited shadow that the world’s tourists pass through unawares, wrapped up in contemplating the treasures of Khmer art. In…