The Missing Picture

How do you keep the memory of your dearly departed alive when there’s no testimony they ever existed? In the second half of the 70s, Cambodia experienced a true genocide under the bloody rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. 13 years old during the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, Rithy Panh survived the atrocities, watching some of his closest family members meet gruesome deaths. Unable to come up with hard evidence about his family’s misfortune and the destiny that befell thousands of others – the only audiovisual documentation that survived the genocide are state propaganda films – the director recreated the missing pages of Cambodian history using clay figurines in a detailed diorama of the painful past. Haunting, moving and eventually transcendental, this autobiographical film is a provocative artistic choice and an ode to the power of memory and the ability of cinema to capture the elusive. Un Certain Regard Award at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year at the 2014 Oscars.