Snow Leopard Competition | Focus on Cambodia
Meeting With Pol Pot
Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot
Cambodia’s Submission for the 97th Academy Awards®
112 min | Drama | 2023 | France, Cambodia, Taiwan, Qatar, Turkey | French, Cambodian | English Subs
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.
Short film: Happy Ending (Cambodia) screened before feature
Schedule
Nov 17, 2024 | 02:00 PM
Director
Rithy Panh
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."
Credits
Director:
Rithy Panh
Producer:
Roger Huang
Choi Byung-hwan
Justine O.
Cinematography:
Aymerick Pilarski
Editing:
Matthieu Laclau
Rithy Panh
Cast:
Irène Jacob
Grégoire Colin
Cyril Guei
Somaline Mao
Screenwriters:
Pierre Erwan Guillaume
Rithy Panh
Music:
Marc Marder
