Documentary about Cambodian Genocide Hits the Big Screen

Almost thirty years afterwards, various former inmates of security prison S21 return to the Tuol Svay Prey Institute, which was converted into the biggest torture and detention centre of Cambodia. Sixteen thousand people underwent torture for absurd and repugnant pretexts in S21, run by Duch (Kang Kech Ieu). The film confronts a dozen former Kmer Rouges – prison guards, interrogators, a doctor and a photographer, amongst others – and two of their victims.

Poeuv was one of the prison guards. He started work aged 12 in the feared and hated “S21” Phnom Penh detention centre where 17,000 people were tortured, interrogated and executed between 1975 and 1977. In front of the camera he describes what he did every day to stop prisoners, made desperate by so much suffering, from escaping their handcuffs and throwing themselves out of the window.

Vann Nath, official prison artist, was one of the victims. Today he is one of the few survivors. In an act of great physical and psychological bravery, he returns to the abandoned S21 building for the first time in over 20 years. The testimony of Nath against his executioners makes it possible to identify “who was a victim, who was responsible and who was just obeying orders”, claims Rithy Panh.

Born in 1964 in Phnom Penh, this filmmaker was put in a work camp at the age of 11, like thousands of his compatriots. He escaped four years later and in 1980 he settled in France. For Rithy Panh this documentary “is an attempt to come to terms with our collective history so as not to leave this burden to future generations. The day will come when our children come to trust the world which surrounds us. The ghosts will stop haunting the living.”

The documentary, co-produced by the television channel ARTE and the National Audiovisual Institute of France (INA) through their Programme for the Promotion of Creative Content, was screened at the last Cannes Festival.