Few filmmakers have mapped the terrain between memory and trauma with the same formal ingenuity as Rithy Panh. Over the past three decades, the Cambodian auteur has carved out a singular space in world cinema, restlessly moving between documentary, fiction, and hybrid forms to confront the unspeakable violence of history and the precariousness of truth in the digital age. His films, from S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine to the Oscar-nominated The Missing Picture, are not only acts of remembrance, but also defiant works of political imagination.
This year, as President of the Jury at the Locarno Film Festival, Panh brought that same intellectual rigor and poetic sensibility to the fore, championing cinema as an art form still capable of asking uncomfortable questions in an increasingly distracted world. In this wide-ranging conversation with Screen Anarchy, he reflects on the elusive process of filmmaking, the dangers of algorithmic conditioning, the banalization of images, and the need for cinema, and society, to reclaim freedom, slowness, and dignity. Speaking with the candor of a seasoned artist and the urgency of a witness, Panh reminds us that cinema is not just an artform, it is a responsibility.
Screen Anarchy: You’ve moved fluidly between documentary, fiction, and hybrid forms. What determines the form a project takes for you at the outset?
Rithy Panh: A dream, some money, time. I take a lot of time, you know. One, two, three, sometimes four years to make a film. I need to really live with it, come into my mind, sleep with it, drink with it.
In the beginning, I don’t always know where I’m going. And that requires a lot of support. It’s difficult to explain to a producer, for example. Producers need to know where you want to go, how much time you’ll need to shoot. Most of the time, if they like the idea, I just ask: “How much budget do you have?” And we make it work. It doesn’t cost them more if I shoot over three years. This is the freedom I want. If I take six months to edit, it’s fine. It’s the same price. I need that freedom, that way of working.
Whether it becomes a documentary or fiction depends on the moment. Fiction is more complicated. You have to make certain choices earlier: cars, technicians, crew. Documentary is, in a way, more difficult than fiction, but you can change the idea during the process. I have no rule. I just want to make a film. Documentary or fiction, it doesn’t matter. The most important thing for me, and for all film directors, is the freedom to change, to adapt, to start again.
With The Missing Picture, for example, I signed the contract for one film. After six months of shooting, maybe more, maybe less, I changed everything. Nobody knew except my main producer. She’s wonderful. She said, “Yes, you can try.” Only she and I knew. And at one point, I had about thirty minutes of footage and didn’t know how to finish it.
So I waited for the dream to come, sometimes at night. In the morning, I would go see my team. We were only five or six people. We worked in my office. We used small lights from the supermarket. I would be there, directing the painter: “I want this one, like that.” I would sketch it. He would work all day, all night. Then we would shoot a sequence.
I would come back, not knowing exactly what to do next, start the script again, day and night. When I had some sequences, I sent them to Christophe Bataille. He would see something, write something, and we’d talk. But he didn’t know exactly where the text would go, or how it would fit with the voiceover. Sometimes it took time. I’d ask him: “Write me something about that.”
The same with music. Sometimes the composer would send a piece, sometimes a sequence with music, sometimes not. But I would take that music and re-edit it. Sometimes layering three pieces together, sometimes moving it to a different place. It was a very artisanal process. And I like to work like that.
How did Irradiated come into existence?
Irradiated is like an emergency film. I felt the urge to make it during Obama’s time. I read in the newspapers that we had more atomic bombs than before. The agreement with Russia was supposed to work, but everybody was building more and more bombs.
One idea came to me: what does extreme violence mean? So I went to Japan. I made some images there, went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and worked with new-generation artists to recreate Butoh. The Butoh has disappeared—it came after the nuclear bomb. Right after the bomb, in Japan, you couldn’t talk about it. They called it éclair.
Only some people addressed it. I knew a couple living near Tokyo, the Marukami couple, who created something like Picasso’s Guernica for Hiroshima. I went there. They were very kind. The museum was no longer supported by the government, because it talked about the bomb, only by private funding. The director was very open-minded. I worked a lot there, not so much in a concrete way, but to try to feel something. I sent a young artist there to study the very underground art that emerged immediately after the bomb. I asked him to tell me something, by using the soul.
Then I went to Zurich, where there’s a laboratory for epigenetic study. How trauma transmits or doesn’t. It’s fascinating. They experiment with mice. One group is raised in normal conditions, they eat, they play. The other group grows up under extreme stress: violent sounds, lightning. When these stressed mice are put into water, they swim for a short time, then give up and drown. The normal mice try to survive. And they found this effect lasted for five generations.
How is it possible? Scientists don’t say that the cell keeps the memory, because if you said that, you’d be called crazy. But it’s like epigenetics, a kind of remembering. It’s still there.
I decided to make a film about that. I met beautiful people, like Mr. Kodama, a survivor. He died after the film. He saw it, he’d had something like thirty-eight operations. I told him I wanted to be with him, but not necessarily show him in the film. He was angry at everyone. At one point, he showed me that his DNA was all broken. The government wouldn’t let me use the picture. So he wrote a letter to the hospital: “I, Kodama, give him the right to choose the picture of my DNA.” He told me: “Tell the world what the DNA speaks.”
So I made the film about this extremity, about how badly we treat the body. And now we are talking about the atomic bomb again, North Korea, Ukraine, wherever. It’s a complicated situation.
Maybe it’s not a success, telling people to be careful about extreme violence. People don’t listen. They want a picture of pizza on Instagram, a selfie. That’s what they want. But it’s our fault, we deserve that. We’ve gone crazy. And now I don’t know how we can get out. I’m not exaggerating.
It seems to me we live in a form of totalitarianism, digital totalitarianism, with algorithms. And soon, when I say soon, I mean tomorrow, maybe today already, when you combine social networks and AI, you will feel the pain. It’s happening, I think. Maybe today already.
And don’t believe in “social” networks, there’s no social network. There’s only network. Network to exploit you, to make you consume, to fake you. Many countries are already working on AI to fake you. We cannot deny progress, but we have a duty to teach. That’s a choice: to find things, to verify things.
Do you think cinema can push against this?
Yes. Cinema can do a lot. I don’t want to play with that. It’s serious. But we need space. Without space, it’s very difficult. When you can pay less than twenty dollars for a streaming service with four platforms, the economics become impossible.
We also need journalism. And we have to ask: what is the meaning of journalism now? You can’t report from anywhere you want. You can’t write whatever you want. Slgorithms control you. Nobody will give you the budget to travel, to go see for yourself. If I say I want to make an article about the Satyajit Ray films, who will give me two weeks in Calcutta to understand them again? No one.
Even in film, when you look now, there’s no light anymore. You can fix it in digital, with CGI. But in classic films, take Bergman, take Antonioni, you had light here, shadow there. Now everything is evenly lit, because you need to go fast, you have 4K cameras, you rush. At the end, art and cinema become rare, difficult.
Do you think art and cinema have changed a lot in recent years?
Yes, because of how cinema is consumed now. Before, we felt we were making something valuable. The rhythm was different. Today you go to Instagram, Facebook, you have short series, three minutes or less. Exactly the time between two subway stations. You sit, watch, it’s over. You walk, come back, maybe watch episode one, then episode five—it doesn’t matter. You watch because you are addicted to these short things.
You’re completely addicted. It becomes your story. Now it’s Top Chef, three minutes, and they come back with Top Chef again. Or Squid Game, eliminating somebody. Then they make another story inspired by Squid Game in three minutes: eliminate this guy, he’s rich, his wife cheats on him.
Yes, we fight for gender rights, but nobody fights against that kind of digital conditioning. This world comes from the cloud, and everyone looks down at their phone. Maybe ten percent don’t use smartphones. In the subway, everybody is like this. You never see them look up.
Do you think cinema is incompatible with the digital world, or could it coexist?
It could, if you respect diversity. But diversity doesn’t make money. The masters of the digital world make money. Also, children don’t want to go to museums anymore. If parents take them, even if they don’t like it at first, maybe they will remember something later. A Monet painting, Van Gogh, the Mona Lisa… maybe it will stay with them. But culture has to be built. Images have to be built. If you don’t give people something to dream about later, you will find human beings completely empty-handed. Politicians should understand this.
But politicians also use social media. Why would they take care of that? It’s propaganda, totalitarian propaganda. Control of the spirit. It’s 1984, Orwell told us not to do it, but we imitated it. It’s real, still today. That worries me. I think it’s already late, but maybe we can still do something.
Introduce film in schools at the same level as literature. You ask young people to read Shakespeare, also ask them to watch films. In one year, read two or three films, go once to a museum, watch a film, write some criticism. Make people calm. Make actors, critics, audiences talk together. Give them a perspective of art.
Art is not the red carpet. It is the essence that can give each person grace and dignity. If you think, you can defend your dignity. If you don’t think, you are a slave. That is our problem today.
And when I say “artist,” I don’t mean only painters or filmmakers. An artist is someone who creates something original. You can make a cake, original, delicious, and that is art. Everywhere you can eat nuts, but if you grow your own, taste them fresh, it’s different. I have grandchildren, I try to offer them different tastes. Something from the garden. It’s hard, they prefer the packaged sweets. I understand.
I try to make pasta with them, just flour, water, mixing. They taste the difference when they make it themselves. This is what art should be, finding taste, finding an image, finding a painting. It starts there.
One thing happened in Japan that was interesting. A new Minister of Education came and said: “Shut down all the social studies, sociology.” Those who protested were the big companies. They said: “No, don’t shut it down. We need sociology to understand how people behave.” That’s true. We need to understand how people develop taste, how they shape their values. It’s not only about improving quality of life. It’s about understanding society.
But when you explained how Irradiated came to life, what is the story behind Meeting with Pol Pot? Because they are completely different films.
It’s about information, the manipulation of information. Meeting with Pol Pot, at that time, you could be anywhere. And afterward, the information you got was often fake. The journalist character, in the real story, was based on a man from the U.S. and an African journalist. I imagine the African journalist as someone who, when he was young, saw the assassination of Lumumba. He witnessed it without being able to do anything, he was just a child. So when he saw the first signs of genocide later in life, he remained silent. That’s why you can’t go inside Gaza today. You can’t hear anything. It’s still silence. No images.
In Cambodia, I always thought of it as a genocide without images. Nobody saw them. If you could find a photo taken under the Khmer Rouge, I would be happy to receive a copy. In Rwanda, too, there were few images from journalists, but the crime itself, no images. For the Khmer Rouge, there were only official images. When you destroy an enemy, sometimes you take a picture of them, but otherwise, nothing.
For me, Meeting with Pol Pot is about finding images, building them, taking them back, and reflecting on them. Coming back to history. I believe in art, it’s not propaganda. There is always a line, a sign, something you can pick up. You cannot destroy humanity completely. There’s always a trace somewhere. Maybe that’s the job of the artist too.
The African photographer in the film disappears because he wants to see the images, to verify them. And the woman character experiences silence, not the silence of peace, but a silence without life. No sound, no music, no talking. When the intellectual wakes up to what’s happening, it’s already too late.
It’s a film about manipulation. People sometimes go too fast with me, saying it’s “about the Khmer Rouge” again. But that’s not entirely true. If you take all my films, there is something deeper than just the Khmer Rouge. The form of totalitarianism reappears, again and again, just with a different mask.
We are now in an era where journalists are stopped from doing their work, Ukraine, elsewhere. They know from Vietnam that journalists can change the course of a war with an image. So since the Iraq war, journalists have been strictly controlled. And of course, there are moments like when the U.S. Secretary of State held up that “evidence” to the world, it was fake, and he knew it was fake. But it was shown anyway.
Are you working on other projects now?
Yes. But I want to come back to the first gestures of cinema, the origins. What is cinema for? It happened to me by accident, but cinema… it can feel small now. I have to admit, I’m a little bit lost.
What do you mean?
I mean that storytelling, in the way it’s done now, doesn’t interest me as much. How people light a scene, how they compose it, too often it’s calibrated, formatted. At first, I thought, “Oh, the new series format, not bad.” I enjoyed it. But little by little, it became a factory. Crime became the main subject for documentaries.
If you want to make a crime documentary, the streaming channels will fund it. But if I ask for a documentary about Somalia, I have a problem.
I’m not against new formats. But I wish there was space for other kinds of stories, not the same space as crime series, but some space. A film about people who walk in the mountains, or who wake up early to pick up trash and clean the streets. Why not? What is the meaning, the value of that work?
Maybe a documentary about work itself. But the system pushes for the quick, consumable image. If you’re Obama, you can make a series. You know nothing, but you make a selfie, and it’s considered democracy. It is freedom, yes, but also the banalization of images. We’re in the middle, and we need to find a solution. Right now, I’m lost. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find something.
So you don’t have any projects currently?
I have some adaptations.
Book adaptations?
Yes, book adaptations. And I just finished writing a book my old co-writer, Christophe Bataille. Every two or three years we write a book together.
But I like to go back to my first love in cinema, documentary or fiction, I don’t mind, but I want to find something from childhood, innocence, poetry… something like that. I’m not sure I’ll get the budget to do it.
We’ll find a solution. You have to think of a film like the last dish you will eat in your life, enjoy it. Every day I wake up and try to work, but also to find one beautiful idea. Say hello to people, smile. Find one beautiful thing every day.
I’m training, seriously. When I die, I want my last moment to be seeing beautiful flowers, a beautiful day, a beautiful life. If you don’t train, it’s hard. You might see only what’s bad. So I try: say hello to everybody at the restaurant, even if they don’t know me. Watch the cook prepare an egg, boiled, soft, fried. It’s beautiful. Small details like that mean something to me.
Cinema is also about those small details, they give you more information about a person than a speech ever could. You can talk about eggs for five minutes and know something about someone.
When you talk about cinema and the digital world changing, are you also thinking about changing the format? Finding hybrid forms that disrupt or subvert the concept of traditional cinema?
If cinema is not freedom, I can’t make it. I need freedom for my own nightmares, my own dreams. I don’t want to make a film just for the sake of making a film. I need art, imagination, poetry, mostly poetry. I don’t watch many films now.
Commercial or arthouse?
Everything. But I mostly watch old films. And I read poetry, I forget it quickly, but it stays somewhere inside you. It teaches you to appreciate, to see differently.
I tell my students that one of the saints of cinema is Chris Marker. When I’m in difficulty, I think, “Oh, Chris, help me.” I recommend every young filmmaker and teacher to watch him again and again. Teaching is also learning, you understand more when you teach. And the most important word for me is freedom. Don’t worry too much, feel free and try things. You can throw it away, take another path, but if you’re not free, you’ll regret it.
When you mentioned a film about children and the innocence of childhood, your work is quite political. Would this also be political, or is it just natural that your work is political?
All my work is political. Even children’s films. If I make a film about a child in Palestine, for example, happy, full of joy, suddenly that child could lose a leg. A lot of children die or are injured there. A journalist would report it: “Child injured, bombing.” And stop there. I would want to follow that child for five, ten years, see how they grow up, how they return to the hospital for surgery, how they protest. That’s the difference between journalism and cinema. We need both, but they are complementary.
Animation can also be political. The King and the Mockingbird by Paul Grimault is basic animation, but beautiful, and political. You give children a magical world that isn’t just about 3D effects. Avatar? Fine. But where is the poetry in Avatar? Technology is one thing, poetry is another. If they meet, I’m happy, but often technology takes over.
When we talk about children and war, there are two things: one is not my job, the other is. My job needs time. Who will give me the money to follow a family for five or ten years? I have a center in Cambodia, Bophana Center, founded 17 years ago. It’s about access to memory: photos, images, radio, songs, books, free for all. Access to memory should be a universal right, like human rights.
One day, Palestine will need something like that. Not only images of bombings, but also other images, from before. Show young people where they come from. Many don’t know. Identity also comes from images.
Sometimes I tell young filmmakers: film a dish. Ask your grandmother to cook it, tell its story, where she learned it, from whom. That’s identity. People think identity is only a flag or a nation. Yes, but it’s also the detail of survival. Preserve it in your heart, it will give you dignity one day.
Cover image courtesy of Locarno Film Festival.