Probably the best documentary that I have ever watched
This is probably the best documentary film that I have ever watched. Hats off to Thet Sembath!
shareAbsolutely! I just saw it last night and it blew me away. He was able to get such great openness from the former killers and witnesses. I can't believe this whole issue doesn't attract more attention. It would be like 75 million Americans being killed in a 4 or 5 year period.
What was most disturbing to me was how it was sometimes hard to assign blame to individuals presented in the movie when they were just ordinary people pulled out of the fields and told to start killing.
It was chilling how the top and mid-level leaders had their rationalizations and excuses wrapped up in a neat package like saying my orders were misinterpreted or the orders I got were vague but implied that I had to kill everyone connected with suspected traitors or be a traitor, myself.
Too bad this film got buried. Was it a distribution problem? This is as good an inside view as we will ever get from that awful period. It's a great companion piece to John Pilger's Cambodia series, starting with the 35 year old "Cambodia Year Zero."
Watching The Killing Fields is a good start, but what this young man has produced here really brings it all home. Should be seen, together with Pilger's work, in American classrooms, and in Cambodian ones too.