Based upon documentation of forced confessions made during the Khmer Rouge era in Cambodia, this film reconstructs the relationship of a young woman, Hout Bophana, and Ly Sitha before they were tortured in executed in 1977.
A moving psychological portrait of Cambodia decades after a devastating genocide, examining how baksbat (Khmer for "broken courage") continues to impact modern Cambodia.
My mother always refused to speak about her childhood during the Cambodian genocide. Upset by her silence, my brother and I decide to follow Antoine, a grandson of Armenian genocide survivors, photographing the ghosts of his ancestors in the Middle East.
In search of the lucrative matsutake mushroom, two former soldiers discover the means to gradually heal their wounds of war. Roger, a self-described 'fall-down drunk' and sniper in Vietnam, and Kouy, a Cambodian refugee who fought the Khmer Rouge, bonded in the bustling tent-city known as Mushroom Camp, which pops up each autumn in the Oregon woods. Their friendship became an adoptive family; according to a Cambodian custom, if you lose your family like Kouy, you must rebuilt it anew. Now, however, this new family could be lost. Roger's health is declining and trauma flashbacks rack his mind; Kouy gently aids his family before the snow falls and the hunting season ends, signaling his time to leave.
1989. An examination of how the UN protected and revitalised the Khmer Rouge.
John Pilger shows how the UN has allowed the Khmer Rouge to grow stronger.
Two Dutch lawyers, Michiel Pestman and Victor Koppe, travel to Cambodia in 2011 to defend Nuon Chea in an international tribunal. Nuon Chea, also known as Brother No. 2, was the second man after Pol Pot in the Khmer Rouge regime. He is being charged with mass murder and crimes against humanity. For four years, the documentary follows the lawyers in their attempt to give this man a fair trial, but the UN tribunal is beset by local interests and a government which consists partly of other former members of the Khmer Rouge who would really like all of the blame to rest solely on the defendant. What should've been the crowning achievement in the careers of the lawyers turns out very different.
Documentary of the S-21 genocide prison in Phnom Penh with interviews of prisoners and guards. On the search for reasons why this could have happened.
Cambodian refugee Ted Ngoy builds a multi-million dollar empire by baking America's favourite pastry: the doughnut.
The story of Thun Chay, a Cambodian who was left behind by his mother in a refugee camp during their escape from the Red Khmer and the civil war in their home country.
The Khmer Rouge slaughtered nearly two million people in the late 1970s. Yet the Killing Fields of Cambodia remain unexplained. Until now. Enter Thet Sambath, an unassuming, yet cunning, investigative journalist who spends a decade of his life gaining the trust of the men and women who perpetrated the massacres. From the foot soldiers who slit throats to Pol Pot's right-hand man, the notorious Brother Number Two, Sambath records shocking testimony never before seen or heard. Having neglected his own family for years, Sambath's work comes at a price. But his is a personal mission. He lost his parents and his siblings in the Killing Fields. Amidst his journey to discover why his family died, we come to understand for the first time the real story of Cambodia's tragedy.
This short documentary chronicles the culture and arts of Cambodian Americans and the Lowell, MA community through the eyes of Sokhary Chau, the first Cambodian American Mayor in the United States. Chau immigrated to the U.S. at seven years old to escape the Khmer Rouge genocide. Through this unique story that showcases the best of Lowell—immigrant success, assimilation, history, and the development of the arts—we see a man born into a war-torn country who comes to America to be a first-in-the-nation leader.
Through daily routines in a rural village, an indigenous elder couple recall their strange marriage to their grand-daughter, and sometimes to each other, in the changing rhythm of nature around them.
In okay bye-bye, so named for what Cambodian children shouted to the U.S. ambassador in 1975 as he took the last helicopter out of Phnom Phenh in advance of the Khmer Rouge, Rebecca Baron explores the relationship of history to memory. She questions whether, "image and memory can occupy the same space." Building on excerpts from letters, found super-8 footage of an unidentified Cambodian man, iconographic photographs from the Vietnam War and other partial images, Baron combines epistolary narrative, memoir, journalism, and official histories to question whether something as monumental as the genocidal slaughter of Cambodians during the Pol Pot regime can be examined effectively with traditional methodologies.
Hope and closure are not always words that come to mind when discussing a film about the Khmer Rouge, whose bloody, fanatical rule from 1975 to 1979 resulted in the deaths of more than two million people from starvation, disease, torture and executions. But these two do come together, despite the pain of memories, in Cambodia After Farewell, a well-acclaimed, 100-minute documentary by French Cambodian director Iv Charbonneau-Ching and Jeremy Knittel to mark 4 decades since the Khmer Rouge took control of the Southeast Asian country to put in place the purest form of communism and the ideal agrarian society. The documentary follows the journey back to Cambodia – and into the past – of the family of Iv Charbonneau-Ching, with his mother and aunt, as they reconstruct, piece by piece, what happened to the family members they lost to the Khmer Rouge.
Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia's Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979.
The atrocities Sok Chea witnessed as a child during the rule of Pol Pot continue to haunt to this day, nearly thirty years later. So she is shocked when she suddenly comes across the man who was in charge of her prison and whom she holds responsible for murdering most of her family. Once again he holds a prominent position, this time as Deacon of Death or leader of cremation ceremonies. She decides to collect evidence against him. He must stand trial. But can she succeed in a country still ruled by fear. Besides which, Cambodians believe in karma and forgiveness. Wrongdoers are punished after their death anyway and will suffer for many lives to come. Sok Chea'ss quest leads her to a confrontation with Karoby, in the same pagoda where the atrocities occurred.
CAMBODIA: THE PRINCE AND THE PROPHECY explores the years of Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s rule, his juggling for peace, his charisma and contradictions. Following the Prince’s overthrow in 1970, the film traces Cambodia’s destruction during the five years of war before Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge came to power and launched their revolution… As a central theme, the film and its sequel CAMBODIA/KAMPUCHEA feature exclusive interviews with Prince Sihanouk, and focus on his pivotal role in shaping Cambodia’s fate.
