Creator
Thet Sambath
Thet Sambath is a Cambodian investigative journalist and co-director of the documentary Enemies of the People.
Thet Sambath is a Cambodian investigative journalist and filmmaker who co-directed the documentary Enemies of the People with Rob Lemkin.[1][2] For about a decade he sought out former Khmer Rouge cadres, from foot soldiers to Nuon Chea, and recorded their accounts of the killings.[2][3]
Career
Sambath worked as a paramedic for the American Refugee Committee on the Thai-Cambodian border. He then served as a police interpreter for the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) and as a human rights investigator for the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO).[1] He also worked as a translator and fixer for international aid groups and later for news organizations before becoming a journalist himself.[4] Since 1994 he has worked as a producer, translator and camera operator for international broadcasters, including the BBC, WGBH's Frontline, NHK and NBC.[1]
He reported for Cambodia Today and Cambodia Times, and he built his investigative skills breaking stories about scandal and corruption at the Cambodian Daily and the Phnom Penh Post. In 2011 he was based in Phnom Penh as a senior reporter at the Phnom Penh Post, and his investigative stories had been syndicated internationally.[1] In 2002 he traveled to the United States on a Jefferson Scholarship.[1]
Enemies of the People
From 1999 Sambath spent about ten years looking for confessions and explanations from people who had carried out the Khmer Rouge killings of 1975 to 1979.[3][5] Many of the people he interviewed were farmers in northwest Cambodia. He began with two farmers who had taken part in killings, and he has said it was easy for him to talk with them because he was a countryman who spoke their language.[6][5] In Pailin he earned the trust of former cadres as an honest broker.[7] At first he filmed alone.[5]
After he was introduced to Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge's second-in-command, who was then living as a free man near the Thai border, Sambath visited him regularly for three years before Nuon Chea agreed to talk about his past. Sambath went on to record dozens of interviews with him.[1][6][7] He was with Nuon Chea on the night before his arrest in September 2007. His last interviews took place while Nuon Chea and other senior officials were waiting to be arrested by the UN-backed tribunal.[4][6] In the film Nuon Chea admits that killings were ordered out of fear of Vietnamese infiltration. Two former cadres speak of their regret and sorrow for the killings they were made to take part in.[5][7]
Working with the British filmmaker Rob Lemkin, Sambath turned this reporting into Enemies of the People, released in 2009. The film records testimony from foot soldiers and from Nuon Chea, known as Brother Number Two.[1][2][5] Sambath and Lemkin refused to let the court use their interviews as possible evidence of confession, and they turned down a subpoena for an advance copy of the footage, citing their agreements with the people they had interviewed.[4][7] From 2011 he published further excerpts of his interviews with Nuon Chea.[3]
Recognition
- World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival (2010), for Enemies of the People[2]
- Academy Award shortlist, for Enemies of the People[1]
- Knight International Journalism Award (2011)[1]
After Sundance the film won 30 more prizes.[1]
Works
- Enemies of the People (Film)
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 International Center for Journalists, Thet Sambath, Cambodia
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 POV, Enemies of the People
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Wikipedia, Enemies of the People (film)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 BBC News, Perpetrator's perspective: Befriending the Khmer Rouge (December 12, 2010)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 The Harvard Crimson, Cambodian Filmmaker Finds Truth Beneath the Killing Fields (April 23, 2014)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Keswick Film Club, Enemies of the People film notes
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Time, Enemies of the People: The Khmer Rouge, Close-Up (August 6, 2010)