The cinema of Rithy Panh: everything has a soul

Abstract

Over four decades of making films, director Rithy Panh continues to expand the possibilities of documentary filmmaking. His traumatic experiences of the Khmer Rouge’s dehumanising regime drive the creative impulse that makes him Cambodia’s most famous director. This interdisciplinary collection elaborates upon the global geopolitical concerns such as migration, exile, imperialism, and gender that Panh astutely implicates within the specificities of Cambodian history. Not only does Panh expose the role cinema plays in reifying structures of oppression, he also shows how it might also produce a measure of redemption.