Born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 1964, Rithy Panh lived through the Khmer Rouge Genocide. In 1979, he fled to Thailand and later resettled in France, where he became a filmmaker, investing all his work in this tragic historical narrative.

In 2003, he shocked the world with the documentary S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine. The film features interviews with both victims and perpetrators, and notably has the perpetrators reenact their past actions—making it a landmark work in the history of documentary cinema. A decade later, in 2013, He released The Missing Picture, a deeply personal account of his own experiences under the Khmer Rouge, created clay figurines to represent people and scenes, crafting an astonishing and emotionally powerful reconstruction of traumatic memory. 

Rithy Panh’s body of work has been profoundly shaped by this traumatic past. Apart from making films, he founded Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center to preserve precious audiovisual memories of the country. He will be visiting TFAI and participating in the Q&A session.