Cambodia & Cinema: All about “Meeting With Pol Pot” by Rithy Panh

More details on Rithy Panh's next film, soon to be released in Cambodian cinemas. From international success to author biography, a must read.

Set of one scene in the movie. Photo Kimlong Meng

Synopsis

Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) - 1978. Three French journalists are invited by the Khmer Rouge to conduct an exclusive interview of the regime’s leader, Pol Pot. The country seems ideal. But behind the Potemkin village, the Khmer Rouge regime is declining and the war with Vietnam threatens to invade the country. The regime is looking for culprits, secretly carrying out a large scale genocide. Under the eyes of the journalists, the beautiful picture cracks, revealing the horror. Their journey progressively turns into a nightmare. Freely inspired by journalist Elizabeth Becker’s account in “When The War Was Over”.

International Press quotes

"A hauntingly timeless depiction of power and its mechanisms, filtered down to an intimate tale of journalistic integrity."

Variety

"There is real power in one filmmaker's dedication to re- examining real world horror from many angles over many years."

Deadline

"A chilling historical drama rendered with impeccable sleight of hand."

Variety

"Rithy Panh's highly personal style of fiction is a new variation on his cinematographic quest to shed light on the Cambodian genocide."

Cineuropa

"Meeting with Pol Pot boasts powerful performances from its cast, with Irène Jacob and Cyril Gueï playing journalists."

The Film Verdict

"Aymerick Pilarski's cinematography often recalls that of Vittorio Storaro on Francis Ford Coppola's partially Cambodia-set "Apocalypse Now."

Variety

"A thriller-like intrigue in Meeting With Pol Pot is sustained by tension around."

ScreenDaily

"The film received a standing ovation in the [Cannes Festival] Debussy hall, including not just for the director and cast, but a deeply moved Elizabeth Becker herself."

Warp

Rithy Panh biography

Rithy Panh was born in 1964 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. At the age of 11, like all Cambodians, he was interned in Khmer rouge camps for rehabilitation through labor. Four years later, in 1979, he managed to escape to the Mairut refugee camp in Thailand. A year later, he moved to France, and in 1985 entered the IDHEC film school. He has dedicated most of his films to his native country, traumatized by massacres of extreme violence - two million Cambodians, or one in four, exterminated in four years. "Without this war, I would never have become a filmmaker. I bear witness to give back to the dead what the Khmer Rouge stole from them. I am a passer of memory in debt to those who have disappeared."

The book which inspired the movie

Elizabeth Beker biography

Elizabeth Becker is an American journalist and author. She began her career as a war correspondent in Cambodia for the Washington Post. She was also a correspondent for the New York Times. She was one of the two Western journalists authorized to visit Democratic Kampuchea in 1978, during which she met Pol Pot and Leng Sary. In 1986, she published When The War Was Over. In 2015, she testified before the Khmer Rouge War Crimes Tribunal, known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

Extract from the book - courtesy of Mme Becker

˝I was one of a handful of young Western reporters who had got their start covering the war. We came of age in Cambodia. We lost friends in the war, and we witnessed, unknowingly, the start of one of this century’s major catastrophes. At war’s end most of us did not want to believe the first terrifying stories from the refugees for fear it meant the Cambodians we had befriended were now at risk. Most of us felt that we had seen the worst during the war - the devastation and bombing, the fast decline of the country that was unlike the war in Vietnam. […] I was as surprised as everyone at the evacuation and subsequent destruction of the Khmer society. I decided I had to get back to Cambodia and see the revolution for myself. […] We three arrived in Cambodia with varying appreciations of the revolution. Caldwell had a political stake in its success; I had a longstanding personal and professional commitment to uncover its meaning; Dudman had an enviable detachment to the story. Quickly we discovered what Cambodia meant to each of us. What we did not know was that before we arrived it was decided that one of us would be killed.˝