Creator

Rithy Panh

ប៉ាន់ រិទ្ធី

Rithy Panh is a Cambodian director, producer and author whose documentaries and features address the Khmer Rouge period and its aftermath.

Rithy Panh (ប៉ាន់ រិទ្ធី, Panh Rithy) is a Cambodian director, screenwriter, producer and author whose films address the Khmer Rouge genocide and its aftermath.[1][2] He has made films since his first documentary, Site 2, in 1989, and his The Missing Picture (2013) was the first Cambodian film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.[1][2] He co-founded the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center in Phnom Penh.[1]

Early life

Panh was born in Phnom Penh.[3] He survived four years of terror under Pol Pot, and he has said that he buried people in mass graves in his village.[4] In 1979 he escaped to Thailand and lived for a time in the Mairut refugee camp, and after the fall of the Khmer Rouge that year he reached Paris.[1][2]

He came to film late and by chance. While at a vocational school for carpentry, he was given a video camera at a party; in his own account, a teacher gave him a camera and three reels of Super 8 film.[1][5] He helped a friend light a short film inspired by Alfred Hitchcock and made a short comedy of his own, and a friend lent him an editing machine and taught him to cut film.[6][5] He then studied at the French film school IDHEC (Institut des hautes études cinématographiques), where he was one of the few students who wanted to make documentaries.[6][1] Andrei Rublev was the first film to move him deeply, and he names Chris Marker as his chief model in cinema.[5]

Films

Site 2 (1989), his first feature documentary, is set in a refugee camp on the Cambodian-Thai border. It won the Grand Prix du Documentaire at the Festival of Amiens and several other international awards.[6][1][2] He returned to Cambodia in 1990 while keeping Paris as his base.[1] His first fiction feature, Rice People (Neak Sre, 1994), was made in Cambodia as the country returned to peace, with a Cambodian crew and dialogue in Khmer.[7] It competed at Cannes in 1994 and was the first Cambodian film submitted for the Academy Awards.[1][2]

The Land of the Wandering Souls (2000) follows workers digging a trench across the country for Cambodia's first optical-fiber cable, as the country moves into modern times.[1] In S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003), named for Tuol Sleng prison, he brought former prisoners, among them the artist Vann Nath, back to the site with their former guards, and he persuaded the guards to reenact what they had done.[1][3] The film was presented out of competition at Cannes, as was The Burnt Theatre (2005), about a theater troupe living in the burned-out Suramet Theatre in Phnom Penh.[2][1] His 2011 film Gibier d'élevage (The Catch) adapts a novel by the Japanese writer Kenzaburō Ōe and moves its wartime story, about villagers and a downed Black U.S. Air Force pilot, to Cambodia.[1] He directed, edited and filmed Duch, le maître des forges de l'enfer (Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell, 2011).[2]

The Missing Picture (2013) tells his own experience of Pol Pot's Cambodia through still clay figures. The idea came when he found that a member of his set-design team was a gifted clay sculptor.[3] The figures are made by hand from river clay and dried in the sun, and he rarely animates them, relying on the camera, the gaze and the viewer to give them movement.[5] He wrote the film's text with Christophe Bataille.[8] The film won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes in 2013 and was nominated for the Academy Award.[2][3] He has said that making it brought no catharsis.[3]

His later films Exile (2016), presented at Cannes, and Graves Without a Name (2018), presented at Venice, explore the lasting effects of the genocide.[2][9] For Irradiated (2020) he filmed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, worked with young Japanese artists to recreate Butoh, and studied how trauma passes between generations at an epigenetics laboratory in Zurich.[8] Irradiated won the documentary award at the Berlinale in 2020, and Everything Will Be OK, a film about the rise of totalitarianism built with animal figures and archive footage, won a Silver Bear there in 2022.[9][6] Meeting with Pol Pot (Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot, 2024) premiered at Cannes; he calls it a film about information and its manipulation.[2][8] Nous sommes les fruits de la forêt (We Are the Fruits of the Forest) followed in 2025.[10][1]

As a producer, he made Red Wedding (2013), about forced marriage under the Khmer Rouge, and he produced First They Killed My Father (2017).[3][10][1] He often spends one to four years on a film, and a project may become documentary or fiction as the work unfolds.[8]

Writing

Panh's autobiography, L'Élimination (The Elimination), was published in 2012.[10]

Bophana Center and teaching

With the director Ieu Pannakar, Panh developed the Bophana Center in Phnom Penh to preserve Cambodia's film, photographic and sound history.[1][10] It is named for the subject of his docudrama Bophana: A Cambodian Tragedy.[1] He also founded the Cambodian Film Commission, which develops the film industry and runs the CFC Film Lab, a professional training program for Cambodians.[9]

He teaches in Cambodia and at the documentary lab of the Doha Film Institute, and he mentors young filmmakers from many countries.[6] He gives students paintings, photographs and films to study, among them works by Jackson Pollock and Goya.[6] The director Kavich Neang names him as his mentor.[3] Panh supports teaching cinema in schools alongside literature.[8]

Justice and memory

Panh has supported the Khmer Rouge tribunal throughout, while disagreeing with parts of its work. He criticized the absence of Nuon Chea from the Duch trial and the lack of forensic digging at the mass graves in his village.[4] He has sought ties between Cambodian and Rwandan survivors and has been in contact with Holocaust survivors.[4] He does not want to be defined as a survivor and calls himself a filmmaker.[5]

Recognition

  • Grand Prix du Documentaire, Festival of Amiens, for Site 2 (1989)[1]
  • Competition, Cannes Film Festival, for Rice People (1994)[2]
  • Honorary doctorate, University of Paris-VIII (2011)[10]
  • Un Certain Regard Prize, Cannes Film Festival, for The Missing Picture (2013)[2]
  • Academy Award nomination, Best Foreign Language Film, for The Missing Picture[3]
  • Preservation and Scholarship Award, International Documentary Association (2014)[10]
  • Documentary award, Berlinale, for Irradiated (2020)[9]
  • Silver Bear, Berlinale, for Everything Will Be OK (2022)[9]

He has served as president of the Caméra d'or jury at Cannes, choosing among 22 first features, and he was president of the jury at the 78th Locarno Film Festival in August 2025.[7][5][8]

Works


See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 Rithy Panh, Wikipedia
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 Festival de Cannes, Rithy Panh
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 BBC News, Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh's search for catharsis (February 3, 2014)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 JusticeInfo.net, Rithy Panh: living the experience of genocide in body and soul (November 27, 2018)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Cambodgemag, Rithy Panh: "Who am I to judge?" Filming as resistance in a digital age (March 13, 2026)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 Screen Daily, Rithy Panh on the joy he finds in mentoring rising filmmakers
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Festival de Cannes, Rithy Panh, President of the Caméra d'or jury
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 ScreenAnarchy, Locarno 2025 interview: jury president Rithy Panh (August 31, 2025)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Doha Film Institute, Rithy Panh, mentor profile
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 Rithy Panh, IMDb
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This page was last edited on 3 October 2026, at 01:02.