CTFF 2025 Official Selection: Meeting with pol pot
MEETING WITH POL POT
Running Time: 1h 52m
Language: French with English Subtitles
Director: Rithy Panh
Writers: Rithy Panh, Elizabeth Becker, Pierre Erwan Guillaume
Producers: Keely Badger, Catherine Dussart, Roger Huang, Justine O.
Cast: Cyril Gueï, Irène Jacob, Grégoire Colin
Synopsis:
Three French journalists accept a risky invitation from the Khmer Rouge to visit Cambodia in 1978. Their journey becomes a dangerous odyssey as they witness the regime’s brutality and struggle to report the truth.
Q&A with Award Winning Writer, Journalist, Filmmaker “ELIZABETH BECKER”
Moderated by DEATH IN CAMBODIA PODCAST, Dorothy Chow
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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2025. 12:00 PM – 3:00 PM @ Art Theatre of Long Beach
WRITER, DIRECTOR, Rithy Panh
Rithy Panh is a filmmaker, writer, and producer. Born in Cambodia, he studied filmmaking at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinematographiques in France. His work focuses primarily on the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in his homeland. Rooted in first-hand experience, Panh’s works have a rare and striking authority.
He has directed numerous internationally acclaimed films, including The Rice People, which was selected for the Official Competition of the Cannes Film Festival in 1994; The Land of Wandering Souls (2000), which won several awards, including the Robert and Frances Flaherty Award at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival; the influential S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine (2004), which took numerous awards around the world, among them the Albert Londres Award; Paper Cannot Wrap Embers (2007); The Sea Wall (2008); and Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell (2012). In 2013, Panh directed The Missing Picture, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and won the Grand Prix in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. He then directed France is our Mother Country (2014), Exile (Cannes Film Festival 2016), and Graves Without a Name (Venice, Telluride, and Toronto Film Festivals 2018). He is also a principal founder of the Cambodian Film Commission, an industry development organization that includes the CFC Film Lab, a professional film training program for Cambodians.
New York Magazine: VULTURE’s The Best Movies of 2025 (So Far)
“Meeting With Pol Pot is a fictional work inspired by the American journalist Elizabeth Becker’s 1986 book When the War Was Over. The three westerners in the film are based on Becker and two others who visited Cambodia in 1978, though none of the real individuals were French: Richard Dudman was a veteran American journalist and Edward Caldwell was a socialist thinker from Scotland and a vocal supporter of the Khmer Rouge’s project. Rithy has taken his liberties with the book, I suspect partly to lend this tale a certain universality, to reach beyond the particulars of his country’s tragic history and explore the queasy psychological territory where belief systems are confronted and begin to dissolve. Not everyone survives such a confrontation.” – Bilge Ebiri, a film critic for New York and Vulture
WRITER, JOURNALIST, FILMMAKER, Elizabeth Becker
Elizabeth Becker is an award-winning journalist and author who began her career as a war correspondent for the Washington Post in Cambodia. She later became the Senior Foreign Editor of the National Public Radio and a New York Times correspondent covering national security and foreign policy. She has been the recipient of numrous awards including accolades from the Overseas Press Club, DuPont Columbia’s Awards and was a member of the Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in covering 9/11. She is the author of two previous books, When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution, the definitive book on the event that has been in print for thirty-five years and Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism, an exposé of the travel industry.
