Meeting with Pol Pot

Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot

Rithy Panh 2024 Cambodia, France, Qatar, Taiwan, Turkey 112 min N-16

French Khmer

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Three French people arrive in Cambodia to meet the mysterious dictator Pol Pot: a reporter who already knows the country, an academic sympathetic to the dictatorship’s ideology, and a photojournalist. Lured by the promise of an exclusive interview, they fall into a carefully laid propaganda trap, where an idyllic facade conceals a terrible reality.

“Neither a conventional historical drama nor a straightforward documentary, Meeting with Pol Pot is a hybrid - a staged confrontation with one of modern history’s most brutal dictators. Rather than focusing on victims, though their presence is always felt, director Rithy Panh turns his lens on the perpetrator, exploring the nature of evil and the haunting power of memory. In doing so, the film forces us to look in the mirror not just as horrified witnesses and resistors of Cambodian genocide, but as individuals who, at times, have been seduced by and submitted to the devastating force of unchecked power.” (Programme curator Karolis Žukas)

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Masters

The program is presented by