IN 2014, I spent some time in Cambodia speaking with survivors of the Khmer Rouge for a university project I was working on.
They told me horrific stories of watching their mothers die of starvation in front of them, as their mother was giving all their food to her children.
They told me about seeing their brothers, sisters and friends shot.
These horrific, but personal, stories stayed with me to this day and what I felt hearing them were the same feelings I felt when I saw First They Killed My Father.
The film, directed by Angelina Jolie, is an adaptation of the memoir of the same name by Loung Ung (played in the film by nine-year-old Sareum Srey Moch).
The film opens on April 12, 1975. Phnom Penh had fallen to the Khmer Rouge (a communist regime that wanted to nationalise and centralise the peasant farming society of Cambodia and kill anyone that was educated) after the brutal Cambodia Civil War.
Seven-year-old Ung watches from her family-home balcony (her father is a member of the government army) as the close-by US embassy is evacuated.
In the streets below, the Khmer Rouge are rounding up the citizens of the city and marching them out into the country.
Ung and her family manage to make their way out of the city but, as the film’s title suggests, her father’s links to the army are discovered and he is killed.
What follows is a story of survival and a child’s fight to stay true to herself.
Jolie has made several questionable films as a director, none of them really hit the mark, but First They Killed My Father does.
Her control of tension and emotion really leaves the audience feeling like they are watching this film through Ung’s eyes.
Through Jolie’s direction and Moch’s acting, a larger story about the death of three million people feels personal.
First They Killed My Father could also not have come out at a more important time.
Cambodia is facing a political crisis again. It is one of the most corrupt countries on Earth and Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge child soldier, is arresting political opponents and shutting down independent media outlets.
First They Killed My Father serves as a reminder we cannot let those atrocities ever happen again, whether in Cambodia, Myanmar or anywhere in the world.
The film is out now on Netflix. Five stars.
This review initially appeared in the South Burnett Times.