Bophana Production

A 5-year-old girl embarks on a harrowing quest for survival amid the sudden rise and terrifying reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia's Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979.

Based on the true story of Benjamin Prufer and Sreykeo Solvan. The unexpected and uncertain love story of Sreykeo, a 21 year old bar girl in Phnom Penh and Ben, a young German student traveling to Cambodia on a post graduation summer trip. When Ben returns home to Germany he discovers that Sreyko is sick and he takes on the responsibility to save her. On the way he discovers a world where not everyone is dealt the same cards and where motivations are not always pure.

The film centers on a young French widow and her two adolescent children as they attempt to carve out a meager life for themselves by farming rice fields alongside the ocean in French Indo-China in the 1930s. Their efforts are hampered each year by the presence of the sea, which invariably floods the fields with saltwater and wipes out the crops. In desperation, the mother realizes that their only hope lies in the construction of a sea wall to prevent continued flooding, but the mother must cut a swath through the local bureaucracy in an almost Sisyphean attempt to make this happen. Meanwhile, her obstinate daughter, Suzanne, draws the romantic obsessions of a well-to-do Chinese gentleman, Monsieur Jo. Though he could easily provide a way out, the possibility of a romantic relationship between Jo and Suzanne could just as easily fall prey to local racial prejudices that would damage or ruin the lives of both.

Two decades after forging an unlikely alliance in Pol Pot's Cambodia, a French ethnologist and a former Khmer Rouge official meet again after the latter is arrested for crimes against humanity.

Camille, a young lady who has joined a Catholic mission in Cambodia and is ready to take her vows, crosses paths along a river and the Angkor ruins with a Cambodian man, Sambath, on a regular basis.

When an American plane crashes in the Cambodian jungle, the pilot is taken captive by the Khmer Rouge. They instruct the kids of a village to keep an eye on the prisoner. While the younger kids gradually become friends with the stranger, the older boy called Pang has a different attitude. Since he grew up without parents, he accepted the Khmer rouge as his replacement parents and endears himself to them by betraying villagers. When Pang becomes responsible for watching the prisoner, things become worse for the pilot.

The film traces modern-day slavery in Cambodia by disclosing the fate of this young woman and following, in parallel, the daily lives of two human traffickers, a local recruiter and the head of an agency. Cambodian people call these traffickers Mey Kechol: The Storm Makers.

Under the Khmer Rouge regime, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, directed the M13 prison for four years, before becoming the head of S21, the terrifying death machine that eliminated Khmer Rouge opponents. Some 12,280 Cambodians met their deaths here. In July 2010, Duch was the first Khmer leader to appear before an international court, which sentenced him to 35 years in prison. He appealed the sentence. While Duch waited for his new trial, Rithy Panh questioned him in depth.

Over three million Cambodians died in the genocide between 1975 and 1979. The Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror also decimated a homegrown film industry that had flourished since 1960: movie theaters were bombed, film prints were destroyed and artists were executed. In Golden Slumbers, French-Cambodian filmmaker Davy Chou mourns this loss of lives and culture, but balances the somber material with a playfulness that honors the lush melodramas and mythic adventures of the glory years.