Rithy Panh

It is only by reflecting on the past that one can create a better future.

S21' was a film about corporeal memory and how the same gestures repeated many times years earlier can be reawakened.

In all of my films, there is a desire to testify, to interrogate the past.

When the Khmer Rouge reached Phnom Penh, the first thing they did was to evacuate the population. Then they took over. The point of a revolution is to bring justice to the people, so even if you don't have proof of sabotage, you manufacture it.

The Khmer Rouge tried to delete everything. They tried to erase our past, our personality, our land, our sentiment. What we tried to do in 'The Missing Picture' was to reconstruct our identity, to bring it back to the people through cinema.

I have never been political in a partisan sense.

It's better to live a world where you can hear different languages and sensibilities.

What I like to do with every film is to bring a form, like a cinematographic proposal. If you watch 'S21,' it's a form; 'Duch, Master of the Gates of Hell' is a different proposal.

The Missing Picture' came together slowly, after much provocation and by refusing different forms, until I finally found the right form.

I think that, as a filmmaker, you're always making the same film, regardless of how many different stories you tell. This is the case for me, whether I'm making documentaries or fiction films.

To find money to make a film, you have to write maybe 50 pages to explain what you'd like to do, what the film will be, but everybody lies. Because he doesn't know what the film will be. Everybody writes 50 pages and sends it to a TV channel, a producer, to get money, but everybody lies. Or else your film is not interesting.

Art is freedom. If you defend art, you defend freedom.