FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER

Cambodia/USA, 2017, 136 minutes, Colour.
Sareum Srey Moch.
Directed by Angelina Jolie.

Over the decades Angelina Jolie has been noted for her compassionate outreach. She also made a film in the Balkans, In the Land of Blood and Honey, followed by the story of Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini, a plane crash and his 45 days drifting in the Pacific before being captured by the Japanese.

This time she has moved to Cambodia and collaborated with Loung Ung, who wrote her memoir of being a child in the 1970s, the years of the American bombing of Cambodia followed by the taking over of the country by the Khmer Rouge. She was separated from her parents, wandered the killing fields, working, surviving with other children, involved in the battle between the Khmer Rouge and those who rebelled against them, eventually being reunited with her mother and some of the family.

In some ways, this film serves as a documentary about changes in Cambodia, the middle-class affluent families and the Khmer Rouge taking over, sending them into exile, into the fields to work, many executions. The film shows the intensity of the younger members of the Khmer Rouge, their brainwashed approach to ordinary citizens, harshness and brutality.

Angelina Jolie also brings great humanity, female sensibility, to the story of the young girl, to the stories of the other women who suffered during these years.

The main film for comparisons or as a companion film is Roland Joffe’s 1984, The Killing Fields.

1. The film based on the personal memoir by Loung Ung? Her collaboration on the screenplay with Angelina Jolie? A heartfelt telling of the story?

2. The Cambodian settings? The late 1960s and early 1970s? Richard Nixon and his decision to bomb Cambodia, yet the fiction that it was not being bombed, the neutral country? The visuals of the bombings and the devastation? The growing propaganda against the Americans?

3. Life in Phnom Penh, prosperity, the middle-class family and their lifestyle? The effect of the bombings?

4. The rise of the Khmer Rouge, against the Americans, invading the cities, arrests, destruction, pillaging, deaths? The portrait of the Khmer Rouge throughout the whole film, the soldiers, the young women, the youth movements, the uniforms, the violence, the socialist attitudes, toppling of privilege, everybody forced to work? The number of deaths, the cruelty? The final statistics about deaths?

5. The portrait of the family, the home, the join in the family, the lifestyle? The father and his work? The mother and the children? The children in their age?

6. The suddenness of the attack, getting possessions, fleeing, walking, the growing masses of people, the soldiers, the harshness, registrations, condemnations, executions?

7. The children wandering, the focus on Loung, the close-ups of her face, her anxiety, her age? The children with their mother? The trek? The separations, the deceit in terms of work for the government, the work in the fields?

8. The details of the harsh life, clothes, work, the military and the threats? The mother sending the girls away, their story about being orphans? They’re being taken in, the supervision and the harshness? The moment with a sympathetic soldier – and Loung seeing him being tortured at the end?

9. The regime, the indoctrination, the patriotic songs, the loyalties?

10. The changes, the children fleeing, the soldiers, caught in the crossfire between rebels and the Khmer Rouge? Deaths?

11. The defeat of the Khmer Rouge, the children saved, the devastation, the return home, reunited with mother and siblings?

12. Angelina Jolie’s sensitivity to the children, the family, the mother, relationships, suffering?

13. Angelina Jolie and the photography, the work in the fields, the fields of the seasons, the aerial shots, the crowds of people?

14. The audience drawn back into the experience of Cambodia in the 1970s?