Meeting with Pol Pot

Feature movie directed by : Rithy Panh, writing credits (based on a novel written by Elizabeth Becker) : Pierre Erwan Guillaume, Rithy Panh, produced by : CDP, Anuphead Prod, Bophana, Catherine Dussart, Rithy Panh, Justine O., Roger Huang, Fatma Al Remaiha, Mehmet Zaid, Sobaci, Muhammed Ziyad Varol, Mirsad Purivatra, Jovan Marjanovi, Georges - Marc Benamou, cinematography : Aymerik Pilarski, Mesa Prum, film editing : Rithy Panh, Matthieu Laclau, music : Marc Marder, cast : Irène Jacob, Grégoire Colin, Cyril Gueï, ..., 1h52mn, (2024).

Since thirty years the Cambodian film director Rithy Panh deals with the story of his country between 1975 to 1979 when the red khmers have executed two millions on innocent people. Inspired by a real story "Meeting with Pol Pot" show us three westerners Elizabeth Brecker, Malcolm Caldwell and Richard Dudman moving at the end of 1978 to Cambodia for interviewing the dictator Pol Pot. After following studies in Paris he wants to build a society constucted on the Rousseau good savage myth with the methods of the 1793 French revolutionaries. This uggly utopia begins in April 1975 by the seizure of power transforming the country as a penal colony. Hardly paranoid Pol Pot organizes many trails for killing his oponents but he agrees to speak with these three westerners because he wants to hide the economic falling of the regime. The three don't share the same profile. Lise writes, Paul makes pictures and Alain is a marxist teacher. With the help of archives pictures and small figurines inside a set put in front of the three during a directed visit the film maker succeeds to highlight the repression. The westerners except Alain understand that nothing works in this false paradise and they decide to ask real questions and do real pictures. The Pol Pot dictator doesn't appear physically during the meeting and the spectators can only watch his shadow and ear his voice in spite of the fact that he is the main travel topic. He is frightened of everything and after the speaking the teacher Alain is killed without any reasons. Even if many people think that Pol Pot has given the order to do this. "Meeting with Pol Pot" show us the real face of a bloody dictatorship and also the blindness of many westerners from intllectuals to politics until some youth people.