One of the most harrowing and compelling personal
documentaries of our time, ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE exposes
for the first time the truth about the Killing Fields and
the Khmer Rouge who were behind Cambodia’s genocide.
More than simply an inquiry into Cambodia’s experience,
however, ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE is a profound meditation
on the nature of good and evil, shedding light on the capacity
of some people to do terrible things and for others to forgive
them.
Winner of a dozen top documentary festival awards, including
a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and the Grand Jury Award
at the Full Frame Documentary Festival, this is a riveting
film that takes audiences as close to witnessing evil as they
are ever likely to get. It is also a personal journey into
the heart of darkness by journalist/filmmaker Thet Sambath,
whose family was wiped out in the Killing Fields, but whose
patience and discipline elicits unprecedented on-camera confessions
from perpetrators at all levels of the Khmer Rouge hierarchy.
This is investigative journalism of the highest order.
“Stunning. One
of the most gripping
and moving films I have ever seen.”
- Andrew Marr, BBC Radio
“Inspiring.
A testament to one man’s persistent search for the truth.
Extraordinary on several fronts.”
– Stephen Holden, New York Times
“A must-see
exposé. Fascinating and Remarkable.”
– Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times
“A chilling on-the-ground
account of how orders to kill
were passed down from the top. Certain to stir audiences.”
– Brendan Brady, Time Magazine
“Astonishing.
An extraordinary historical testimonial.”
– Andrew Shenker, Village Voice
“**** Stares
into the face of evil without resorting to anger or judgment.”
– Eric Hynes, Time Out
“A major contribution
to the canon of human rights cinema. Visceral.”
– John McCarthy, Box Office Magazine
“In the film,
Nuon admits publicly, for the first time,
that he ordered the killing of thousands of political opponents,
which is probably evidence enough to convict him for war crimes."
– Jared Ferrie, Christian Science Monitor
“****. Compelling.
Eye-opening.
Sambath risks everything to seek out the truth.”
– Mark Rifkin, This Week in New York
“This limpid,
haunting, and generous film stands not so much as a damning
accusation but as a striking testimonial to the implacable
will of the Cambodian people.” – Chris
Barsanti, Filmcritic.com
“Provocative,
unflinchingly honest, harrowing and unforgettable.
It’s among the most powerful and important documentaries
of the year.”
– Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru
“This is an
extraordinary historical document, an archive of confessions
with potential for closure, atonement, and belated punishment
from one single man on a mission. Incredible.”
- Diego Costa, Slant Magazine
“More than a
stunning exposé…
A powerful personal quest, the first film to show living perpetrators
of genocide from the highest
policymaker down through
the administrator and the lowest killer.”
- Nora Lee Mandel, Film-forward.com
“Chilling. Gripping.
Redemptive.” – Greg Mellen, Contra
Costa Times
“9 stars out
of 10. Astonishing.
Doesn’t pretend to
deliver a final or even a stable truth, a set of
indisputable facts. Instead, it shows the truth of the process,
efforts to be honest, to confront horrors, to remember and
to forgive.”
– Cynthia Fuchs, Popmatters.com
In 1974, Thet Sambath’s father became one of the nearly
two million people who were murdered by the Khmer Rouge when
he refused to give them his buffalo. Sambath’s mother
was forced to marry a Khmer Rouge militiaman and died in childbirth
in 1976, while his eldest brother disappeared in 1977. Sambath
himself escaped Cambodia at age 10 when the Khmer Rouge fell
in 1979.
Fast forward to 1998, and Sambath, now a journalist, got
to know the children of some senior Khmer Rouge cadre and
gradually earned their trust. Then, for a decade, he spent
weekends visiting the home of the most senior surviving leader,
Nuon Chea, aka Brother Number Two under Pol Pot. “But
he never used to say anything different from what he told
Western journalists,” says Sambath, “‘I
was low-ranking,’ ‘I knew nothing,’ ‘I
am not a killer.’ Then one day he said to me ‘Sambath,
I trust you, you are the person I would like to tell my story
to. Ask me what you want to know.’ For the next five
years he told me the truth, as he saw it, including all the
details of killing.”
Sambath also won the confidence of lower-level Khmer Rouge
soldiers, now ordinary fathers and grandfathers, who demonstrated
for him how they slit people’s throats. It was the first
time these murderers admitted what they had done. He taped
their interactions, and together with British documentarian
Rob Lemkin created this landmark film.
For Sambath, it has been an ongoing, lifelong personal journey
to discover what was behind such horror; he neglected both
his family and his own happiness in the search for truth with
hope of reconciliation. ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE is at
once a cinematically beautiful, chillingly insightful, and
deeply personal piece of documentary filmmaking.
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