Born in 1964 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Rithy Panh was only ten years old when the Khmer Rouge regime took over his hometown in 1975. He witnessed the deportation of its population to work camps. A survivor of the regime’s repression, he saved himself by joining the Mairut camp in Thailand. But those four years of massacres during which he lost his family will always haunt Rithy Panh. He decided to move to France at 17 years old to give himself the time to pull himself together, and began carpentry studies. After shunning his origins, he quickly turned towards cinema to rewrite his history.

The Cambodian-French film-maker began his career as a director in 1989 with his first documentary, Site 2, Aux abords des frontières (Site 2: Around Borders), in which he portrayed the living conditions in a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand. Thanks to the success of this first attempt, he continued his work, alternating between documentary and fiction. By capturing Cambodia’s dark past, he established himself in France as a spokesperson for the genocide.

For over 30 years, Rithy Panh has endeavoured to pass on the horrors endured by scrutinising the Khmer Rouge dictatorship in particular. As attested by his latest documentary, Irradiés (Irradiated, 2020), which draws on narratives of “hibakusha” (the survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings) to fight against forgetting, the director infuses his work with memory dedicated to trauma and the grieving process. Whether he is highlighting the disputes between the Cambodian government and the UN in S21, la machine de mort Khmère rouge (S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine, 2002), speaking about French colonisation in Indochina in La France est notre patrie (France Is Our Mother Country, 2015), illustrating the solitude of exiles in Exil (Exile, 2016), or undertaking an intimate spiritual quest in Les Tombeaux sans noms (Graves Without A Name, 2018), Rithy Panh uses his memories as a survivor as foundations for poignant narratives.

Rejecting labels, the politically engaged director also stands out for his talent as a writer. Putting pen to paper with Christophe Bataille for L’Élimination (The Elimination) in 2012 and La paix avec les morts (Peace with the Dead) in 2020, the author has earned praise from the literary public. An accomplished artist, Rithy Panh has pursued his awareness-raising mission by founding the Centre Bophana in Phnom Penh. Since 2006, this audiovisual institution has allowed Cambodian audiences to peruse videos, photographs, and sound documents collected about the country.

Rithy Panh gained international recognition with his film Les Gens de la rizière (Rice People) at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994. Made entirely in the Khmer language, this feature-length film made history in his country as the first Cambodian film to be showcased at the Cannes Film Festival. While seven of his films were in the official selection, the director won the Prix du Certain Regard in 2013 with L’image manquante (The Missing Picture). It was also the first Cambodian film to receive an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature Film. A true model for his country, Rithy Panh was invited to chair the Caméra d'Or jury for the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.

Beyond his close relationship with la Croisette, the director has touched many generations with his charity work. In 2016, his film L’image manquante (The Missing Picture, 2013) was even screened for secondary school pupils and apprentices as part of educational work to raise awareness about film culture.