Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Rithy Panh, director of “Rice People” and “S21 The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine” is an icon of art-house cinema, at once political, unique, and charming.
The iconic image may be another of his confections – a palatable work built on uncomfortable facts. On the incomplete evidence of a 50-minute on-stage dialog at the Busan International Film Festival on Sunday, Panh comes across as simultaneously contrarian and principled.
A curmudgeonly veteran and yet a filmmaker still curious to learn. “If there were no Khmer Rouge maybe I would not be a filmmaker,” he said of the Communist insurgents, who won the Cambodian civil war in 1975 and whose brutality and atrocities he has spent a lifetime documenting and exposing.
Panh’s family lost everything to the marauding Khmer Rouge or during their five-year rule. He was internally deported into the rice fields, escaped to Thailand and later became a refugee sent to France. “I dreamed of having a camera to record what was happening,” he said. “[At one moment] I wanted to go to Australia, where I heard they have lots of desert, and to get lost.
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