S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine

In the former Tuol Sleng prison, now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, the director brings together two survivors of the genocide in Cambodia, carried out by the Khmer Rouge regime, with their former captors. In this 2003 documentary, Rithy Pahn, also a survivor of the genocide, seeks to expose and, at the same time, find answers to the atrocities committed. Through images, personal accounts and re-enactments, the director redefines collective memory. This film asks the question: where does blind obedience end and personal responsibility begin?

Discussion with director Rithy Panh.

Duration: 101’
Production year: 2003
Country: KH, FR
Language: KM, VI Subtitles: EN

Cannes Film Festival 2003 – François Chalais Award

02:25

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: S21, la machine de mort Khmère rouge

Rithy Panh

Credits

Uso de cookies