Evil has always been here since the world began. Good is what is difficult. It is a work of every day.
— Rithy Panh
As children, we did not have toys. We invented characters and animals; we invented stories.
Cambodia is not only a country of war, but also a country of culture. It's in our DNA.
When I make a film, I don't watch a lot of other films. I read a lot; I try to read poems, things that can liberate my human condition, that make me go away... I spend a lot of the time doing nothing, just concentrating on the subject. Sometimes I'll sit in my chair for two or three hours without doing anything.
Filming, for me, is a way of approaching, little by little - of getting closer and closer to my subject. And that subject itself can transform, or it can remain the same.
I like people who have the capacity to forget. I think that to forget is a good thing. Forgetting is good. But sometimes I cannot. For me, I cannot.
It is only by reflecting on the past that one can create a better future.
Cannes or Oscars is not only to bring happiness and recognition - they protect people like me. The world knows who you are. You can work. You can express. You can help other people. It's not only the star system. It's a symbol of freedom.
People of my generation did not like very much to tell what we lived through during the Khmer Rouge regime.
For the young generation, when they see that there is a film director from Cambodia to go on to be nominated, for them, a lot can change. I don't know another way to restore our identity if it's not art.
Of course, when you're making a documentary, you don't have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room.
When I do feature films, I usually have a very strong sense of what I want to do. I have topics and subjects, so I go for it. I even know technically what I want to. But in the case of documentary, the story comes to me.
Sometimes if you can tell one personal story with a lot of sincerity, it can become a universal story.
I'm not someone who has to make a film at any cost. I have to find the right way to make it or not at all.
I have never been political in a partisan sense.
Evil has always been there; it's always a part of us. Evil is no big surprise. But what about the people who gave freely, who stood up for human dignity? Even in the most extreme and terrible situations, these acts of dignity existed. And for me, that is the banality of good.
'The Missing Picture' came together slowly, after much provocation and by refusing different forms, until I finally found the right form.
Every day, do small gestures of generosity! It does not mean go to Cambodia. Do it at home. If you do nothing at home, evil becomes normal.
The most beautiful thing in Cambodia isn't the country - it's the Cambodian people.
With 'The Missing Picture,' we'd shot for a year and a half already when this idea of the clay figurine, the life that comes from the earth, came to me, and I changed everything.
What I like to do with every film is to bring a form, like a cinematographic proposal. If you watch 'S21,' it's a form; 'Duch, Master of the Gates of Hell' is a different proposal.
Art is giving to what you create a soul.
I never want to be a film director - I want to be a teacher.
When you screen a film like 'The Missing Picture,' it is not like watching TV. Watching TV is very solitary. When you watch cinema, you watch it together, and you talk about it after the screening.
Film is subjective, and we must be careful with that. The kinds of films I love are those that observe, and I give possibility for people to talk. No need for me to tell people what to think - even when I make a film like 'S-21.' It's only one point of view. It's still a film; it's not a tribunal.
When we pray to Buddha, we are not praying to a piece of stone, an image of Buddha, but we pray to the soul of Buddha behind the piece of stone. The souls of the people who are dead now are still with us.
The Khmer Rouge can't destroy me. I still have my imagination and am capable of making films. I am not locked up.
I love archival films very much. I spent thousands of hours watching archive footage. Every time I see it, I see something. Sometimes I think I know this footage, but two years later, I see it again, and I see something new.
If you can keep something very personal, like a song, like a color, like a story, deep in your heart, then nobody can destroy that. Nobody can destroy your imagination; nobody can destroy your love.
The Khmer Rouge tried to delete everything. They tried to erase our past, our personality, our land, our sentiment. What we tried to do in 'The Missing Picture' was to reconstruct our identity, to bring it back to the people through cinema.
I didn't survive because I was stronger than others. I survived because my family and friends helped me to survive. They took my place. My job is to give them back their dignity, tell their story, and say their names.
We need a peaceful, modern Cambodia. We need to achieve that. It's not easy.
I have only one life, and I can't do all. If I do one thing well, I'm happy.
To me, form is not something that you can plan beforehand, especially for a documentary. You can't write it or sketch it. It requires a confrontation with reality, with history, with ethics and morals. After identifying good content, you have to find the right form to express that content.
I am lucky to be a film director. I can create, express. It proves that I am still alive and the Khmer Rouge did not succeed in destroying me.
It's better to live a world where you can hear different languages and sensibilities.
To find money to make a film, you have to write maybe 50 pages to explain what you'd like to do, what the film will be, but everybody lies. Because he doesn't know what the film will be. Everybody writes 50 pages and sends it to a TV channel, a producer, to get money, but everybody lies. Or else your film is not interesting.
I love when you get the feeling of some social reality with a fictional film.
Clay is a very interesting and fundamental material: it's earth, it's water, and - with fire - it takes on form and life.
There is no book-learning culture in Cambodia. People do not read. The children do not read in school. Educators must come up with a policy that meets the great need for knowledge: using modern audiovisual methods that the young can connect with.
Art is freedom. If you defend art, you defend freedom.
'The Missing Picture' is about my story and my parents. Before this film, I never said 'I' in a film, so it is very personal.
Pain is handed down from one generation to the next.
A country cannot develop without a strong identity.
Cinema is not truth. Even when you make documentary films, you can choose to show this shot and not the other shot - this side and not the other side. In cinema, there's one truth - not 'the truth.' It's only 'my point of view.' Cinema is powerful because of that.
In this era of digital special effects, I think it's good to work with our hands and our hearts, to use water and clay, to dry it in the air from the sun. This brings you back to the element of life.
'S21' was a film about corporeal memory and how the same gestures repeated many times years earlier can be reawakened.
We must be capable of writing our own history.
Part of the Khmer Rouge project was not only to destroy individual people, but to destroy the very notion of the individual. I want to simply rebuild the stories of people - it's part of my fight against the Khmer Rouge agenda.
I left Cambodia when I was 12 or 13. I didn't really escape, but I needed to go away.
