With 'The Missing Picture,' we'd shot for a year and a half already when this idea of the clay figurine, the life that comes from the earth, came to me, and I changed everything.
As children, we did not have toys. We invented characters and animals; we invented stories.
I never want to be a film director - I want to be a teacher.
Every day, do small gestures of generosity! It does not mean go to Cambodia. Do it at home. If you do nothing at home, evil becomes normal.
Clay is a very interesting and fundamental material: it's earth, it's water, and - with fire - it takes on form and life.
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.
I love when you get the feeling of some social reality with a fictional film.
Filming, for me, is a way of approaching, little by little - of getting closer and closer to my subject. And that subject itself can transform, or it can remain the same.
In this era of digital special effects, I think it's good to work with our hands and our hearts, to use water and clay, to dry it in the air from the sun. This brings you back to the element of life.
Of course, when you're making a documentary, you don't have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room.
When I make a film, I don't watch a lot of other films. I read a lot; I try to read poems, things that can liberate my human condition, that make me go away... I spend a lot of the time doing nothing, just concentrating on the subject. Sometimes I'll sit in my chair for two or three hours without doing anything.
I left Cambodia when I was 12 or 13. I didn't really escape, but I needed to go away.
When I do feature films, I usually have a very strong sense of what I want to do. I have topics and subjects, so I go for it. I even know technically what I want to. But in the case of documentary, the story comes to me.
'The Missing Picture' came together slowly, after much provocation and by refusing different forms, until I finally found the right form.
I didn't survive because I was stronger than others. I survived because my family and friends helped me to survive. They took my place. My job is to give them back their dignity, tell their story, and say their names.
I am lucky to be a film director. I can create, express. It proves that I am still alive and the Khmer Rouge did not succeed in destroying me.
Art is freedom. If you defend art, you defend freedom.
Pain is handed down from one generation to the next.
If you can keep something very personal, like a song, like a color, like a story, deep in your heart, then nobody can destroy that. Nobody can destroy your imagination; nobody can destroy your love.
In all of my films, there is a desire to testify, to interrogate the past.