PERSPECTIVES WOS 2024
Born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1964, at the age of eleven Rithy Panh was sent to the Khmer Rouge re-education labour camps, like all Cambodians. Four years later, in 1979, he managed to escape and fled to the Mairut refugee camp in Thailand. One year later, he moved to France and in 1985 he joined the IDHEC (Institute of Higher Film Studies). He has made most of his films about his country of birth, traumatized by the extremely violent massacres. “I would never have become a filmmaker if it was not for this war. I bear witness so as to return to the dead what the Khmer Rouge took from them. I am a memory smuggler with a debt to those who disappeared.”
