Meeting with Pol Pot

In 1978, three years into Pol Pot's and the Khmer Rouge's dictatorship, Democratic Kampuchea is devastated. Two million Cambodians have been killed in the genocide. Three individuals are invited by the regime for an interview with Pol Pot: a reporter familiar with the country, a photojournalist, and an academic who sympathises with the dictatorship's ideology. During their stay, the illusion painted by propaganda begins to crumble. Horror is unveiled, and the trip turns into a nightmare. In a cinematographic gesture of great freedom, the film fluidly blends imagery to construct a coherent perspective on vision and blindness.

Discussion with director Rithy Panh.

Duration: 112’
Production year: 2024
Country: FR, KH, TW, QA, TR
Language: FR Subtitles: PT, EN

Cannes Film Festival 2024 – Cannes Première
Warsaw Film Festival 2024 – Crème de la Crème Competition

01:51

Rithy Panh

Rithy Panh was born in 1964 in Cambodia. At just eleven years old, he was taken by the Khmer Rouge to one of their rehabilitation through forced labour camps. He managed to escape four years later to a refugee camp in Mairut, Thailand. In 1980, he moved to France, and five years later, he enrolled at La Fémis (then known as IDHEC). His first documentary and feature film, Site 2, premiered in 1989. Since then, his films have consistently featured in the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, including Rice People (1994), One Evening After the War (1997), The Burnt Theater (2005), Duch, The Master of the Forges of Hell (2011), Exile (2016), and most recently, Meeting with Pol Pot (2024). In 2013, The Missing Picture won the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Film. In 2020, Irradiated won the Golden Bear for Best Documentary at the Berlin Film Festival. Panh describes himself as a “passer of memory in debt to those who have disappeared,” and his films are dedicated to his country, which has been traumatised by the atrocities it suffered. His work explores the brutal memories of war and genocide, as well as the regenerative powers of cinema, music, theatre, and art in general in the rebuilding of his nation.

Original title: Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot

Rithy Panh

Credits

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