Before and after the civil war
The golden age of Cambodian cinema was from the 1960s to the 1970s, although the first films date back to the 1930s. King Norodom Sihanouk was a film-maker and dreamed of becoming an actor, before acceding to the throne in 1941. This was a prosperous period, following the country's independence, when numerous production companies were set up. In all, more than 300 films were made between 1960 and 1974. Of these, often devoted to Cambodian legends, look out for the saga of The Serpent King's Wife (1970-1973), or The Enchanted Forest (1967), which competed at the Moscow Film Festival. Moribund during the 1980s, the local industry gave way to international productions. It wasn't until the early 1980s, after the end of the Khmer Rouge regime, that a new Cambodian cinema emerged. On the one hand, works dedicated to the memory of the horrors suffered by the population. On the other, horror and consumer cinema, often low-budget, rapidly invaded cinemas and conquered audiences, with films like Krasue Mom (1980). Rithy Panh, meanwhile, gained international recognition with such powerful works as Gens de la rizière (1994), S21 La machine de mort Khmère rouge (2003) and L'image manquante (2013). Documentaries and fictions bearing witness to the atrocities committed between 1975 and 1979, his films contribute to the work of remembrance set up around the Cambodian genocide. Today, the country's cinema is struggling to recover from the over-exploitation of low-budget horror films in the 1990s and 2000s, and its leading filmmakers have moved abroad. If you're a lover of the seventh art, you can still enjoy the Cambodian International Film Festival, which takes place in Phnom Penh every July.
Some of the big names to have filmed in Cambodia
Film buffs will easily recognize Angkor Wat from Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love (2000). An archaeological site that has appeared on numerous occasions in the cinema, in productions ranging from Tomb Raider (2001) with Angelina Jolie to Deux Frères by Jean-Jacques Annaud (2004). But other parts of the country, notably the capital Phnom Penh, also feature in 2008's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, or in City of Ghosts (2002), a thriller set mainly in Cambodia. Angelina Jolie recently returned to Cambodia sixteen years after Tomb Raider to film D'abord, ils ont tué mon père (2017), an adaptation of the autobiographical novel by activist Loung Ung. This moving work recounts the trials and tribulations of a Cambodian woman who was just five years old when the Pol Pot regime was established. A film which, like the other works mentioned above, will help you to lift the veil on this terrible past, which is still remembered in Cambodia.
