16/05/2024 - CANNES 2024: Rithy Panh's highly personal style of fiction is a new variation on his cinematographic quest to shed light on the Cambodian genocide

Bunhok Lim (left centre), Grégoire Colin (centre) and Irène Jacob (right) in Meeting with Pol Pot

“We're all alone in this crazy country.” In 1978, three French journalists were the only passengers on a plane that dropped them off on a deserted airstrip in the middle of nowhere (they assumed it was probably two hours north of Phnom Penh). For days, they waited under guard (courteous but hardly reassuring) for permission to go and interview the country's leader. Little by little, their eyes begin to open, but it's not without risks...

For the 8th appearance of his career in the Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival, and this time in the Cannes Premiere programme with Meeting with Pol Pot [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Rithy Panh's choice of subject is hardly surprising, the Cambodian genocide being the filmmaker's favourite subject. On the other hand, not only are his forays into cinematic fiction rare (this is his 3rd feature-length film of the genre - apart from TV films - since his debut in 1989), but he had never before tackled his favourite subject - which has made him the great documentary filmmaker that he is- through fiction. Interest and curiosity were therefore high, and they were not disappointed, with the director succeeding in imposing his characteristic touch, notably by making occasional use of clay figurines (as in his documentary The Missing Picture [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and archival footage, while perfectly embodying his story in flesh-and-blood characters, in particular the three reporters: Lise (Irène Jacob), Alain (Grégoire Colin) and Raoul (Cyril Guei).

“I'm a journalist, not a tourist”, “you have to respect the rules or you'll get fired.” Led by an obsequious, French-speaking and very cautious representative from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Bunhok Lim), our trio is whisked around the area on visits arranged by the propaganda that suits the Khmer Rouge regime, which has been in power for three years. The cult of the personality of Brother No. 1 (Pol Pot), the Potemkin village, interviews conducted in plain English (“with a revolutionary conscience, you can do anything”, “you ask too many questions”), omnipresent military supervision: the days pass in an unproductive wait, even if the journalists are not fooled (they know, among other things, that the entire population of the capital has been deported to the countryside). But everyone has their own character, and while Lise plays along, trying to read between the lines, Alain's only aim is to see Pol Pot again (his old school friend from Paris, whom he admires and with whom he's been corresponding for 30 years). As for the photographer Raoul, he gets so impatient and angry that one day he sneaks off to investigate on his own. An escapade that precipitates everything...

Developed around a plot that progresses subtly in small steps (a screenplay by Pierre Erwan Guillaume and Rithy Panh based on the book When the War Was Over by Elizabeth Becker), Meeting with Pol Pot is a chilling and edifying portrait of indoctrination (“Angkar eliminates all parasites who oppose it”) and the absolute drift of the ideals of revolutionary justice (“the people are in power and the people want blood”), while at the same time touching on the practice of journalism. By masterfully blending fiction, symbolic representations (the figurines) and the realism of documentary archives, the filmmaker finds the right balance (on a reasonable budget) to educate and convey his message of denouncing a genocide, without giving in to the siren song of indecent re-enactment, but without ever hiding from the atrocities committed in the name of a totalitarianism that advocated “the absence of man rather than an imperfect man”, whose definition it claimed for itself.

Meeting with Pol Pot was produced by French company Catherine Dussart Productions (CDP) and Cambodian company Anupheap Production, and is sold internationally by Playtime.

(Translated from French by Margaux Comte)