For the young generation, when they see that there is a film director from Cambodia to go on to be nominated, for them, a lot can change. I don't know another way to restore our identity if it's not art.
Totalitarians always want to kill culture. But imagine life without football, Faulkner, or Bob Dylan. It's not life.
Cinema is not truth. Even when you make documentary films, you can choose to show this shot and not the other shot - this side and not the other side. In cinema, there's one truth - not 'the truth.' It's only 'my point of view.' Cinema is powerful because of that.
'S21' was a film about corporeal memory and how the same gestures repeated many times years earlier can be reawakened.
We need a peaceful, modern Cambodia. We need to achieve that. It's not easy.
I wasn't predestined to be a filmmaker; this wasn't an obvious choice to me.
Evil has always been here since the world began. Good is what is difficult. It is a work of every day.
We need creativity. We need more poetry after Auschwitz.
Part of the Khmer Rouge project was not only to destroy individual people, but to destroy the very notion of the individual. I want to simply rebuild the stories of people - it's part of my fight against the Khmer Rouge agenda.
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.
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.
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.
The most beautiful thing in Cambodia isn't the country - it's the Cambodian people.
There is no book-learning culture in Cambodia. People do not read. The children do not read in school. Educators must come up with a policy that meets the great need for knowledge: using modern audiovisual methods that the young can connect with.
It is only by reflecting on the past that one can create a better future.
Cannes or Oscars is not only to bring happiness and recognition - they protect people like me. The world knows who you are. You can work. You can express. You can help other people. It's not only the star system. It's a symbol of freedom.
People of my generation did not like very much to tell what we lived through during the Khmer Rouge regime.
I like people who have the capacity to forget. I think that to forget is a good thing. Forgetting is good. But sometimes I cannot. For me, I cannot.
It's better to live a world where you can hear different languages and sensibilities.
Evil has always been there; it's always a part of us. Evil is no big surprise. But what about the people who gave freely, who stood up for human dignity? Even in the most extreme and terrible situations, these acts of dignity existed. And for me, that is the banality of good.