Release Date: September 15th, 2017
Angelina Jolie directs this Cambodia-set feature film based on Loung Ung’s memoir, “First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.” Seen through the eyes of a five-year-old cut off from her family during the Khmer Rouge years (commonly known as the Cambodian Holocaust), script co-writer Ung details her personal account of living as a childhood survivor of the Pol Pot regime.
Soldiers took the lives of Ung’s family members, including her parents, two sisters and a number of relatives after storming her native city of Phnom Penh. With the goal of creating a communist utopia, the Khmer Rouge evacuated millions of people to labor camps in 1975 – resulting in a four-year civil war that killed two million people through executions, starvation and disease.
To accurately depict the genocide, Jolie hired Cambodian actors and gathered hundreds of survivors to tell and re-create their harrowing stories.
First They Killed My Father will be available for streaming September 15, 2017 on Netflix.
© Brigid K. Presecky (8/17/17) FF2 Media
Photo: Angelina Jolie and Loung Ung in First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (2017)
Photo credit: Pax Thien Jolie Pitt © Netflix
