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The audience before the screening of “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” at the KMCC Reel-Time Theater March 5, 2026. The final film in the film festival series will show March 26, 2026. (Michael Mulvey | UMGC in Europe)
UMGC in Europe is hosting Rithy Pahn’s “Interview with Pol Pot” (2024), the final showing in a film festival titled “Screened History: Global Pasts in Francophone Films,” at the KMC Reel-Time Theater this Thursday, March 26 at 6:30 p.m. There will be a brief lecture and raffle at 6:15 p.m.
Director Rithy Pahn dedicated his career to exploring the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979. Pahn was a child when the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia. He watched as his parents, siblings, and relatives died of forced labor and starvation. In 1979, Pahn escaped to Thailand and made his way to France. Pahn was training to be a carpenter when he accidentally discovered a video camera. The Cambodian genocide survivor discovered the camera unlocked ways to confront his past. The regime under Pol Pot’s leadership murdered millions of Cambodians.
Since 1988, Pahn has confronted the history and memory of the Cambodian genocide in over twenty documentary and fictional films. The 2001 film “S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine” was a masterpiece and considered a contribution on the genocide equal to Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah” (1985) on the Holocaust. Pahn returns again and again to the question of the genocide and the incapability of fully capturing personal and collective experience of the genocide.
“Interview with Pol Pot” incorporates many approaches from Pahn’s prior films. The film first screened at the 2024 Cannes film festival and appeared in Cambodian theaters the same year. American journalist Elizabeth Becker’s memoir “When the War was Over” (1985) inspired Pahn’s fictional story. Becker visited Cambodia with another journalist and an academic upon invitation of the Khmer Rouge in 1978. They were the first westerners to visit the county since 1975. Becker interviewed Pol Pot. The academic would be shot dead before leaving the country. Pahn sends a fictional group of similar visitors who embrace propaganda before discerning lies. Fake villages. Fake calm. Fake utopia. Behind falsehoods are the crimes that Pahn evidences time and time again in his work. For better or worse, Pol Pot’s fictional visitors discover the truth.
All of us have unique experiences. The movie is shown to reflect on specific academic questions. This movie deals with potentially distressing material, including violence and genocide. The movie is not to be construed as factual or definitive information on this subject matter.
All films are offered at no cost; you must have base access. This is a private university event open to the KMC. All films have subtitles in English. A RSVP is requested for the film on the UMGC in Europe Presents webpage.
