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(More customer reviews)Rithy Panh's award-winning documentary, endorsed by Human Rights Watch, will be painful for any compassionate human being to watch. The documentary brings together two surviving prisoners and a group of former Khmer Rouge cadre, interrogators, executioners, guards, record keepers, and the photographer who staffed the infamous S-21 prison where over 16,000 Cambodians were tortured, interrogated, and trucked off to be killed and cast into mass graves.
The scenes were filmed inside the still standing prison and at the Choeung Ek killing field. The Khmer language dialogue is crisply and accurately subtitled in English.
The executioner sits in his home enduring the lecture by his mother, who bemoans the fate of her son, turned into a killer by the Khmer Rouge. She raised him to know better. His father urges him to speak the truth and take responsibility for those he killed.
Former prisoner Chum Mey collapses in tears in front of the prison, unable to speak, as painful a scene as I have ever watched on film.
Interrogators sit holding photos and confessions of their victims and discuss specific cases -- beatings, torture, forcing female prisoners to strip off their clothes, unspeakable sexual violations. Former guards re-enact their prison routines on site, escorting incoming prisoners, monitoring the cells, taking prisoners to interrogation, taking them to the trucks headed to the killing field. Executioner and driver re-enact the execution and burial routine. The former prison staff re-enact political indoctrination and training meetings they attended in the prison, using genuine archival photos and documents preserved by the superb NGO, the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which is led by Cambodian-American director Mr Youk Chhang. The interrogators admit "embellishing" the interrogation reports. The prisoners admit "implicating" everyone they knew because that was what the interrogators wanted.
Surviving prisoner Vann Nath sits with the shamed former Khmer Rouge staff to try to fathom what was in their minds when they carried out the atrocities. "There are no more ideals, no more human conscience. We become dust in the wind." One of the final scenes is of dust blowing inside the upper floor of the prison during a thunderstorm.
It is in vogue this very week for some of our leaders to publicly challenge Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, calling them haters of America with ridiculous charges not to taken seriously. God knows the work of these two organizations is intended in part to insure that we never have to sit in shame in front of any human who suffered abuse at our hands or in our name. Documenting human rights violations around the world helps us to keep constantly alive in our minds the stark differences between "freedom-lovers" and "evil-doers." We must operate with the utmost transparency and openness with daily international inspections and demand the same from all of our momentary allies of convenience around the world.
Every American interrogator, intelligence officer, and prison guard and military officer should watch and learn and pride himself in knowing that he is in no way like the interrogator in the film who says, "I was arrogant. I had power over the enemy. I saw him as an animal."
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{Winner! International Human Rights Award, Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema 2004}{Winner! François Chalais Award, Cannes Film Festival 2003}{Winner! Gold Plaque, Best Documentary, Chicago International Film Festival 2003}{Winner! Best Documentary, European Film Awards 2003}In 1975-79, almost two million Cambodians lost their lives to murder and famine when the Khmer Rouge forced the urban population into the countryside to fulfill their ideal of an agrarian utopia. The notorious detention center code-named 'S21' was the schoolhouse-turned prison where 17,000 men, women and children were tortured, interrogated and executed, their "crimes" meticulously documented to justify their execution. In this award-winning documentary and astonishing historical document, Rithy Panh and his team undertook a three year investigation involving not only the survivors, but also their former torturers. They persuaded both groups to return to the actual site of what was formerly S21, now converted into a Genocide Museum, to face their past. One survivor, Vann Nath confronts his captors, some of whom were as young as 12 years old when they committed their atrocities.Human Rights Watch, widely regarded as one of the most influential and important human rights organizations in the world, and First Run Features, which for 25 years has distributed films that confront human rights issues, formed a collaboration to bring awareness to films that shed light on human rights abuses throughout the world. S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine is the first title in the HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH SELECTS DVD series.
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