Feature film
Shadow of Darkness
ស្រមោលអន្ធការ
Yvon Hem · 1987
Synopsis
In a labour camp run by ruthless cadres, under the Khmer Rouge regime, an entire family is executed because the youngest son cooked rice in secret in the forest. Only the eldest, Visal, escapes the execution. Fleeing across the country, he meets members of a resistance movement who are making their way to Vietnam.
Context
Shot on 16 mm from a screenplay by its director, with Thoang Vutha and Pisith Pilika, the film is the first produced in Cambodia after Democratic Kampuchea, and the first Cambodian film set under that regime, which only foreign films had shown until then. It runs for one hour fifty-one minutes. The Bophana Center screened it in August 2012, to open the tribute paid to the filmmaker after his death.
Who it is for
For those who want to see how Cambodian cinema first told the Khmer Rouge years itself.
Prizes and reception
The New York Times presented it in January 1989 as the Cambodian war seen through Cambodian eyes; its author received the Golden Buffalo at CamboFest in 2009.
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