RITHY PANH

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.

People of my generation did not like very much to tell what we lived through during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Clay is a very interesting and fundamental material: it's earth, it's water, and - with fire - it takes on form and life.

Pain is handed down from one generation to the next.

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.

As children, we did not have toys. We invented characters and animals; we invented stories.

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.

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.

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.

We must be capable of writing our own history.

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.

The most beautiful thing in Cambodia isn't the country - it's the Cambodian people.

Cambodia is not only a country of war, but also a country of culture. It's in our DNA.

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.

I wasn't predestined to be a filmmaker; this wasn't an obvious choice to me.

When we pray to Buddha, we are not praying to a piece of stone, an image of Buddha, but we pray to the soul of Buddha behind the piece of stone. The souls of the people who are dead now are still with us.

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.

Film is subjective, and we must be careful with that. The kinds of films I love are those that observe, and I give possibility for people to talk. No need for me to tell people what to think - even when I make a film like 'S-21.' It's only one point of view. It's still a film; it's not a tribunal.

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.

Art is giving to what you create a soul.

Totalitarians always want to kill culture. But imagine life without football, Faulkner, or Bob Dylan. It's not life.

'The Missing Picture' came together slowly, after much provocation and by refusing different forms, until I finally found the right form.

I never want to be a film director - I want to be a teacher.

It is only by reflecting on the past that one can create a better future.

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.