Rithy Panh

Rithy Panh — Biography

Rithy Panh (Khmer: ប៉ាន់ រិទ្ធី) is a Cambodian-French documentary director, screenwriter and author born in Phnom Penh on April 18, 1964. He was still a child when the Khmer Rouge expelled his family from the capital in 1975; his father, mother, sisters and nephews died one after another of starvation and exhaustion in a rural labor camp. That loss became the driving force behind a filmography devoted almost entirely to tracing the aftermath of the Cambodian genocide.

After relocating to France, Panh trained at IDHEC (Institut des hautes études cinématographiques) and built an international reputation with testimony-driven works such as S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine. His film L'image manquante earned a Best Foreign Language Film nomination at the 2014 Academy Awards, and over his career he has collected multiple European Film Award wins for Best Documentary along with the Albert Londres Prize, the Prix Marguerite Duras, the Joseph-Kessel Prize and an honorary doctorate from Paris 8 University.

He has continued working into the present with 2024's Meeting with Pol Pot, while earlier films such as 2004's Holy Lola show his range beyond strictly historical subjects, always circling back to themes of trauma, memory and witness.