Nominated by Cambodia for a nomination for the Oscar for Best International Film (it didn't make the short list), the film by filmmaker Rithy Panh hits Brazilian cinemas on January 2 (in Brazil) with distribution by Pandora Filmes.
Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot was my last movie of 2024 and will be my first review of 2025. It starts with a good movie from a different place, Cambodia.
Cambodia suffered severe consequences from the war in its neighboring country, Vietnam, which led to the rise of one of the country's most atrocious and dark regimes, the Khmer Rouge, led by the dictator Pol Pot.
In a diverse world full of great true stories, some of which are more widely told than others (e.g. WW2), it's good to see films that portray a side of world history that is not so old, but which is dark and nebulous and is portrayed by Rithy Panh in his films and in his new feature, which are based on real and historical facts that must be told so that they are not forgotten.
We then move to the late 1970s in Southeast Asia in Cambodia when three French journalists get off a plane to meet and interview the dictator Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge regime (at his invitation) who was responsible for orchestrating one of the greatest crimes against humanity of the 20th century. where almost 2 million people were killed in the country.
The film is loosely inspired by journalist Elizabeth Becker's account in her book “When The War Was Over”.
What Pol Pot and his regime wanted was to show a deceptive propaganda front of what was happening in Cambodia and to put up a smokescreen of what was actually happening internally in the country and by imposing censorship on the 3 French journalists of what to ask and what to photograph and what to show and what to write so that the outside world would see them as a good community government
Although the film is set in Cambodia, the language used in the movie is not Khmer (the country's language) but French, as we see it from the perspective of the French journalists, which even at times in the movie proves to be a major communication barrier, but one that is used intentionally.
*As a curiosity, French was also a widely used and spoken language in Cambodia during its colonial period and was even used in the middle of the 20th century.
The movie is a bit reminiscent of Civil War (Alex Garland) or The Post - The Secret War (Steven Spielberg) from the journalists' point of view, but with a much lower budget and less “action”.
As I'm not familiar with director Rithy Panh's filmography, I know that another of his films was nominated for an Oscar for Best International Film in 2014, called “The Missing Image”, and that in Encounter with the Dictator he also used some of the same techniques as before, such as recreating moments and dialogues using clay images, which is also seen in the trailers.
Over the course of the story, the journalists carry out their little investigations, asking questions of the soldiers and with each discovery, horror and fear grow over them and the imminent danger of meeting the dictator, not even Alain the journalist, who until then was a good acquaintance and even considered a friend of the dictator, since when they were young they studied together and he doesn't escape this, even if it takes him a while to realize it.
And it is through him that one of the scenes shows a book on a table in the dictator's supposed bedroom called “The Social Contract” by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“For Rousseau, man is born good and society corrupts him, in other words, through history man becomes evil, with the aim of harming others.”
This shows the perverse psyche of Pol Pot and his dictatorial regime and his unrepentance for his actions against the population, since he did not tolerate opponents and critics of his government and those who were against him had to be eliminated (the intellectuals were the first).
The tension grew as journalists were increasingly censored and silenced, signaling a tragedy that had already been announced and was already happening.
Despite this, the movie isn't expository, leaving more to be understood, and as the budget was very low, it's also very clear what was going on, but on a much smaller scale than what actually happened.
another weak point is that the cinematography isn't the best, with images that are a little darker and not as sharp as they could be.
Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot is a cruel, perverse and not-so-well-known portrait that also shows the censorship and silencing of dictatorial regimes on the press, whether local or foreign, who try to show what really happened and not what was shown as a façade - a very interesting movie to watch
Ficha técnica
Elenco: Irène Jacob, Grégoire Colin, Cyril Guei, Bunhok Lim, Somaline Mao
Direção: Rithy Panh
Roteiro: Pierre Erwan Guillaume e Rithy Panh, baseado em When The War Was Over de Elizabeth Becker
Direção de fotografia: Aymerick Pilarski, Mesa Prum
Montagem: Rithy Panh, Matthieu Laclau
Técnico de som: Nicolas Volte, Tu Duu-Chih, Eric Tisserand, Tu Tse-Kang
Cenografia: Mang Sareth, Sou Kimsan, Chanry Krauch
Figurino: Ariane Viallet
Direção de Produção: Sovichea Cheap
Trilha sonora original: Marc Marder
Trilha sonora co-produzida e gravada por: Mitch Lin, Shao-Ting Sun
Direção de som: Yu-An Chang
Produção: CDP e Anupheap, TAICCA, Doha Film Institute, TRT Sinema, LHBx An attitude, Obala Centar
Apoio de: le Centre national de la Cinématographie et de l’image animée, Canal +, Ciné+, le Fonds Image de la Francophonie, La Banque Postale Image 16
Produtores: Catherine Dussart, Rithy Panh, Justine O., Roger Huang, Fatma Hassan Alremaihi, Hanaa Issa, Mehmet Zahid Sobaci, Muhammed Ziyad Varol, Mirsad Purivatra, Jovan Marjanović, Georges-Marc Benamou
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