Creator

Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie is a filmmaker and actor who directed the Khmer-language feature First They Killed My Father.

Angelina Jolie is an American actor and filmmaker who directed First They Killed My Father (2017), a Khmer-language feature.[1][2] She first came to Cambodia in 2000 to film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and she has often called the country her second home.[3]

Cambodia

After Tomb Raider, which was released in 2001, Jolie returned to Cambodia as a volunteer for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and visited mine-clearance projects. She became a goodwill ambassador for the agency.[4] She has said her life did not really begin until Cambodia.[5] In 2003 she created the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation to support conservation, agriculture, education, health care and infrastructure in Cambodia.[5] In 2005 King Norodom Sihamoni granted her Cambodian citizenship in recognition of the foundation's environmental work.[6]

As of 2017, she had worked in the Samlot area for about 12 years. The work there covers natural resources and illegal mining, schools for children and health care, and it reaches thousands of people.[7] She has said the projects rely on local leadership and management and are meant to be handed over to local people to run. Mony Chan led her local project team in Samlot.[7]

Directing

Jolie has directed feature films since 2007. Her first feature as director, In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), is set in the Bosnian war of the 1990s, with a cast drawn from the former Yugoslavia.[1][5][4]

Jolie bought Loung Ung's memoir First They Killed My Father from a street seller while filming in Cambodia. She was drawn to it because it tells the Khmer Rouge years through the eyes of a child.[8] She and Ung began adapting the book in 2001 and wrote the screenplay together.[4][3] In June 2015 she brought in the Cambodian director Rithy Panh, who became a producer.[9] Netflix financed the film, and Jolie directed, co-wrote and produced it.[2]

The 50-day shoot took place in Siem Reap and Battambang from November 2015.[9] Jolie made the film in Cambodia, in Khmer, with Cambodian actors and a Cambodian crew, although she had been advised to shoot it in Thailand.[4][8] Her international department heads and crew trained their local counterparts.[9] Many crew members were survivors of the war, and the production brought in NGO staff, educators, de-miners and a therapist to support the cast.[9][8] Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle filmed at a child's height to show Ung's point of view.[4]

The film was made first for Cambodian audiences, with no white characters explaining events in English, and it was scheduled to open across Cambodia before its United States release.[4] It had its world premiere outdoors at the Angkor Wat complex in February 2017.[9] Jolie called the premiere her gift to the country, and she said she made the film for Cambodia as a thank-you and a love letter.[7][9] She hoped it would help Cambodians speak more openly about the Khmer Rouge period.[6] The film was released in 2017 and was selected as Cambodia's entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.[2]

Humanitarian work

Jolie served as Special Envoy to UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres and met refugees, officials and relief groups in more than 30 countries.[5] She founded and funds the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children, which gives free legal aid to young asylum seekers in the United States.[5] The Jolie-Pitt Foundation, which she founded in 2006, has supported children's health centers in Ethiopia and Cambodia.[5] She received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.[1][5]

Works


See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Angelina Jolie, Wikipedia
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 First They Killed My Father (film), Wikipedia
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 ABC News, Angelina Jolie opens up about her Cambodian movie (February 21, 2017)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Genocide Watch, Among the ghosts of Cambodia's killing fields: on the set of Angelina Jolie's new film (January 11, 2017)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Angelina Jolie honoree biography (2014)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 BBC News, Angelina Jolie on Cambodia, politics and a 'difficult year' (February 20, 2017)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 VOA Khmer, VOA Exclusive: Beyond Film, Angelina Jolie To Continue Empowering Cambodians (February 22, 2017)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 NPR, 'This Is Their Film': Angelina Jolie tells a story of Khmer Rouge survival (September 13, 2017)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 Screen Daily, Angelina Jolie on 'First They Killed My Father': "I made it for Cambodia"
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:31.