Film
Meeting with Pol Pot
Meeting with Pol Pot is a 2024 drama by Rithy Panh about three French journalists who visit Democratic Kampuchea in 1978 at the Khmer Rouge's invitation.[1][2] Its French title is Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot.[3]
Synopsis
The journalists accept a risky invitation to tour the countryside and interview Pol Pot.[1][4] As they see through the regime's propaganda and witness its brutality, the journey turns dangerous, and they struggle to report the truth.[1][4] Irène Jacob plays Lise Delbo, Grégoire Colin plays Alain Cariou and Cyril Gueï plays Paul Thomas.[3] Bun-Hok Lim plays Comrade Sung, and Somaline Mao is also among the principal cast.[3][5] Panh himself appears as Pol Pot in the journalists' meeting with the leader.[5]
The story is fiction, inspired by Elizabeth Becker's 1986 book, When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution.[1][2] The three journalists are based on Becker and two other Westerners who visited Cambodia in 1978, among them the American journalist Richard Dudman. None of the real visitors was French.[1]
Production and credits
Panh and Pierre Erwan Guillaume wrote the screenplay; the festival and IMDb credits also list Becker as a writer.[5][1][3] Catherine Dussart, Roger Huang and Justine O produced it, through Anupheap Productions and CDP.[5][2] Aymerick Pilarski and Mesa Prum were the cinematographers, Panh and Matthieu Laclau edited it, and Marc Marder composed the music.[5] The film combines reenactments, historical footage and a large model filled with small figures.[5] It was shot in Cambodia, is a co-production of Cambodia, France, Turkey, Taiwan and Qatar, and is in French and Khmer.[3][2]
Release and reception
The film premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival on May 16, 2024.[2] It opened in French theaters on June 5, 2024, and in Cambodian theaters that August.[3][2] It was Cambodia's submission for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards but was not nominated.[2][3] In 2025 it received three nominations at the Asian Film Awards.[6] Strand Releasing distributes it in the United States.[5]
The film had its North American premiere at the 2025 Palm Springs International Film Festival.[4] It was an official selection of the 2025 Cambodia Town Film Festival in Long Beach, with a question-and-answer session with Becker moderated by Dorothy Chow of the Death in Cambodia podcast.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF 2025 Official Selection: Meeting with pol pot (archived)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Meeting with Pol Pot - Wikipedia (2024-08-30)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 IMDb, Meeting with Pol Pot (2024)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Palm Springs International Film Festival, Meeting with Pol Pot (2025)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Seattle International Film Festival, Meeting with Pol Pot (2025)
- ↑ FilmAffinity, Meeting With Pol Pot (2024)