Enemies of the People (film)
Encyclopedia
Enemies of the People is a 2009 British / Cambodian documentary film written and directed by Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath. The film charts the ten year quest of co-director Sambath to find truth and closure in the Killing Fields of Cambodia. The film features frank and detailed confessions by former Khmer Rouge
officials from the most senior surviving leader to the men and women who slit throats during the regime of Democratic Kampuchea
between 1975 and 1979.
. Among the victims were Thet Sambath’s mother, father and brother. He says he did not understand why the Khmer Rouge unleashed such violence on their compatriots. In 1999 he decided to seek confessions and explanations from former Khmer Rouge officials at all levels. None had previously admitted any killings.
In 2001 he met Nuon Chea
, Pol Pot’s deputy, also known as Brother Number Two. Nuon Chea was then living as a private citizen in Prum, a small town on the Thai-Cambodian border. Sambath visited Nuon Chea most weekends for around three years.
During that time Nuon Chea was willing to talk about all phases of his political career except the three and half years of the Khmer Rouge regime. He had previously been interviewed by Western and Japanese journalists but had always denied responsibility for killing anyone in the Cambodian genocide.
In 2004, Nuon Chea made his first admission to Sambath concerning decisions to kill that he made with Pol Pot. Sambath continued to interview Nuon Chea on his role in the Killing Fields for three more years. During that time the United Nations-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
(ECCC) was constituted to investigate the alleged crimes of Democratic Kampuchea. Sambath interviewed Nuon Chea until September 2007 when the latter was arrested and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by the ECCC.
During the same period, Sambath also built up a network of less senior former Khmer Rouge officials and cadres who were prepared to acknowledge and detail their role in the Killing Fields. The film focuses on two Khmer Rouge perpetrators in the northwest of Cambodia. Khoun and Suon take Sambath to the scene of their massacres and introduce him to their superior officer, a woman known as Sister ‘Em’. They give graphic accounts of the massacres they perpetrated. They also give voice to their own feelings of guilt, trauma and remorse. Towards the end of the film Sambath brings Khoun and Suon to meet Nuon Chea and the three former Khmer Rouge comrades try to fathom the history of which they were each a lethal part.
Throughout his three years of research, Sambath omitted to tell Nuon Chea of his family’s fate in Democratic Kampuchea. At the end of the film and just before Nuon Chea’s arrest, Sambath tells the whole story to the former Khmer Rouge leader.
The film also features appearances by Pol Pot
, President Richard Nixon
and Deng Yingzhao, the widow of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai
.
The film was edited in London by Lemkin and film editor Stefan Ronowicz. The score was composed by Daniel Pemberton.
The film’s world premiere was at the 2009 International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA). The film was slightly altered for its US premiere at the 2010 Sundance
Film Festival.
It was released theatrically in the US by International Film Circuit on July 31, 2011 and went on to play in over 40 American cities. It has also been theatrically released in Britain, Thailand and the countries of former Yugoslavia. It is the first Cambodian film to be released in Thailand for 40 years. Thai distributors Extra Virgin’s Managing Director Pimpaka Towira said her decision to release the film was difficult at a time when Thailand and Cambodia were engaged in a military conflict.
It has also played more than 80 film festivals worldwide.
Its US television premiere is in the PBS
documentary series POV on 12 July 2011.
It has not yet been granted a distribution licence by the Cambodian government, although the film has been shown occasionally at an arthouse cinema in Phnom Penh. In interviews the filmmakers have speculated this is because the history is still too sensitive for the current Cambodian government.
The filmmakers declined to depose the film with court on the basis that it would be a breach of the understanding reached with all Khmer Rouge sources. All sources were happy for any and all material to be put in the public domain, but only on the basis that neither filmmaker was an officer or agent of the court. The filmmakers were widely criticised for not handing over their material to the court. On April 9, 2010 the court issued an Order stating that it would not seek to obtain the material by international rogatory letter but instead wait until the material came in to the public domain and seek to use it in the trial then.
On June 27, 2011 the trial of Case 002 against Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan
, Ieng Sary
and Ieng Thirith
began in Phnom Penh. A number of newspaper reports raised the issue of the use of the film in the trial. The prosecution told Agence France Presse that it wanted the “candid admissions” to be used in the trial. Thet Sambath speculated that Nuon Chea may not make the same admissions during the trial. “Before the court he may say something else. But what he told me was the truth.”
The film made its Phnom Penh premiere at the German-owned arthouse cinema Meta House on July 21, 2010. The screening was attended by staff from the court, journalists, NGO workers and politicians including Mu Sochua
. Despite its limited release, the film has generated a level of discussion about the Khmer Rouge that is rare in Cambodia.
In March 2011, Sin Chin Chaya told the Wall Street Journal that the permit had not yet been issued because a “formal permission request” had not been submitted. He remarked that since the Khmer Rouge trial was now underway the decision to approve is at ministerial level.
In January 2010 as a sidebar to the Sundance Festival premieres Sambath and Lemkin showed excerpts of the film to a group of Cambodians living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Many in the audience were refugees from the Killing Fields. Several expressed surprise at their own reactions. Instead of feeling anger and hatred of the perpetrators featured they had feelings of compassion and forgiveness.
Thousands of Cambodians living abroad especially in the US have watched the film. The film was shown in Long Beach
, California, the largest urban Cambodian population outside Phnom Penh, in September 2010. Due to the film’s sensitive nature the United Cambodian Community organised a pre-screening meeting to prepare elderly survivors of the Killing Fields for what they would see. The US’s second largest Cambodian population, in Lowell
, Massachusetts saw the film in November 2010. Another large diaspora community in Minneapolis also saw the film in November. The film is reported to have galvanised ‘ the diaspora to reexamine their country's history and to rethink how to bring reconciliation to the war-torn nation.’
Sambath and Lemkin have attended scores of screenings and live film discussions in the US, Europe and Asia. At the 2010 Sundance Film Festival they participated in a panel on social justice and documentary entitled “Speaking Truth to Power”.
On December 15, 2010 the Los Angeles Times
published a major article by Joe Mozingo entitled ‘Coming to terms with Sadism’ which told the story of one man’s experience of the October videoconference. Long Beach resident Bo Uce was 4 when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. He lost several members of his family in the Killing Fields. Uce believed he achieved a ‘certain peace’ in watching the film and then engaging with the perpetrators in the videoconference.
Andrew Marr
host of BBC Radio 4
’s Start The Week programme called Enemies of the People “a stunning film – one of the most amazing films I’ve seen ... it’s one of the most gripping and moving films I have ever seen.”
Stephen Holden
of the New York Times reviewed the film twice. In his first review he called it “an inspiring film.” In his second review, he writes “Enemies of the People is extraordinary on several fronts. At times, Mr. Thet Sambath suggests a one-man Cambodian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Instead of affixing blame, he seeks the healing power of confession.”
Andrew Schenker in Village Voice noted an antecedent in Holocaust cinema: “Taking in Enemies of the People is a little like watching a Cambodian Shoah
, but as if we had access to the director's methods and motivations instead of just the astonishing results.”
Diego Costa in Slant Magazine
concentrated on the film’s journey into the psychological dimension of the violence: “This is an extraordinary historical document, an archive of confessions with potential for closure, atonement, and belated punishment from one single man on a mission.”
Gary Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times found the film “fascinating”. “How the genial Sambath remains so circumspect throughout his taut sessions with Chea is remarkable, as is so much of this must-see exposé.”
Elliot Kotek in Moving Pictures wrote: “The slow, painful truth is fully revealed in this burning documentary crafted courageously by Sambath and his co-director Lemkin.”
In the Financial Times
, film critic Nigel Andrews gives the film four out of five stars and sees it in the context of Vietnam War cinema. “War crimes cinema gets a new wrinkle, or scar of honour, in Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath’s enthralling investigative documentary. Shades of Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, as this new Kurtz is tracked to his lair. For Conrad and Coppola the landscape traversed was a jungle. Here it is a jungle of the mind.” In a review from Sundance, the same critic wrote:”If vengeance is a dish best served cold, this dish is at once cold and scalding hot.”
Derek Malcolm in This is London wrote: “This astonishing documentary by Cambodian journalist Thet Sambath, whose entire family was killed by the Khmer Rouge, gets as near as anyone has done to discovering how and why the killing fields happened.”
Time Out’s Derek Adams gives the film five out of five stars: “This is patient, persistent, probing and fearless journalism of the highest order and it shocks to the core.”
David Parkinson in Radio Times sounds a note of caution: The methodology employed by Thet and co-director Rob Lemkin is occasionally manipulative and the truth often remains elusive. But this is absolutely compelling, nonetheless.
David Edwards in the Daily Mirror (UK) is moved by the film’s denouement: “The moment when Sambath reveals the price his own family paid is stirring stuff.”
In The Sun (UK) Grant Rollings goes even further: “Sambath deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. If you see one factual film this year, make it this one”
Ron Wilkinson in Monsters and Critics pays tribute to the journalism: One of the most amazing investigative documentary films of all time. The interviews are few but of the highest quality.
Jared Ferrie focuses on the probative and forensic value of the journalism in the Christian Science Monitor: “In the film, Nuon admits publicly, for the first time, that he ordered the killing of thousands of political opponents, which is probably evidence enough to convict him for war crimes – if he ever makes it to trial.”
Patrick Barta in the Wall Street Journal found it to be “not only … a historical document, but also … a work of art in its own right.”
2010 Sundance Film Festival World Jury Special Prize
2010 True/False Film Festival True Life Award
2010 Santa Barbara International Film Festival Best Documentary
2010 Santa Barbara International Film Festival Social Justice Award
2010 Vera Film Festival ,Finland Best Documentary
2010 One World Festival (Prague) Grand Jury Prize
2010 Full Frame Festival Anne Dellinger Grand Jury Award
2010 Full Frame Festival Charles E Guggenheim Emerging Artist
2010 Hong Kong International Film Festival Outstanding Documentary Award
2010 Beldocs, Belgrade Best Documentary Award
2010 OxDox (UK) Best Documentary Award
2010 Norwegian Documentary Festival Best Documentary Award
2010 Human Rights Watch Film Festival New York Nestor Almendros Award
2010 Krakow International Flm Festival Silver Horn Award
2010 Jerusalem International Film Festival “In the Spirit of Freedom” Ostrovsky Award
2010 Dokufest Kosovo Human Rights Award
2010 Batumi International Art-House Film Festival Grand Prix
2010 Ojai Film Festival Best Documentary
2010 Moet British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) Best Documentary
2011 DocsBarcelona TV3 Human Rights Award
2011 DocEdge NZ Best International Feature
2011 DocEdge NZ Best Directing
2011 Makedox, Macedonia, Best Human Rights Presentation
2011 Makedox, Macedonia, Award for Best Moral Approach
2011 Knight International Journalism Award
Nominations
2011 Writers Guild of America Best Documentary Screenplay
2009 International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA) Best Feature Documentary
2010 Grierson Award for Best Cinema Documentary
Enemies of the People was shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2011.
In June 2011 the Washington-DC based International Center for Journalists announced that Thet Sambath was the recipient of its 2011 Knight International Journalism Award for his career achievement. In its press release the ICFJ called Enemies of the People ‘arguably the most important film about the Khmer Rouge’. ICFJ President and member of the jury Joyce Barnathan said Sambath’s work was ‘an amazing, amazing journalistic feat’.
Sambath and Lemkin continue to blog on their researches, adding material on Nuon Chea’s early career and Pol Pot’s rise to power in the Khmer Rouge.
In June 2011 they began to upload further interview excerpts with Nuon Chea. Topics so far include: revolution, killing traitors, confessions, smashing, Year Zero, the nation.
Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan...
officials from the most senior surviving leader to the men and women who slit throats during the regime of Democratic Kampuchea
Democratic Kampuchea
The Khmer Rouge period refers to the rule of Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, Khieu Samphan and the Khmer Rouge Communist party over Cambodia, which the Khmer Rouge renamed as Democratic Kampuchea....
between 1975 and 1979.
Synopsis
An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died during the rule of the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist movement led by Pol PotPol Pot
Saloth Sar , better known as Pol Pot, , was a Cambodian Maoist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea....
. Among the victims were Thet Sambath’s mother, father and brother. He says he did not understand why the Khmer Rouge unleashed such violence on their compatriots. In 1999 he decided to seek confessions and explanations from former Khmer Rouge officials at all levels. None had previously admitted any killings.
In 2001 he met Nuon Chea
Nuon Chea
Nuon Chea , also known as Long Bunruot , is a Cambodian former communist politician and former chief ideologist of Khmer Rouge. He was commonly known as "Brother Number Two" second in command to Pol Pot who was leader during the Cambodian Genocide 1975-1979...
, Pol Pot’s deputy, also known as Brother Number Two. Nuon Chea was then living as a private citizen in Prum, a small town on the Thai-Cambodian border. Sambath visited Nuon Chea most weekends for around three years.
During that time Nuon Chea was willing to talk about all phases of his political career except the three and half years of the Khmer Rouge regime. He had previously been interviewed by Western and Japanese journalists but had always denied responsibility for killing anyone in the Cambodian genocide.
In 2004, Nuon Chea made his first admission to Sambath concerning decisions to kill that he made with Pol Pot. Sambath continued to interview Nuon Chea on his role in the Killing Fields for three more years. During that time the United Nations-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, commonly known as the "Khmer Rouge Tribunal", is a national court established pursuant to an agreement between the Royal Government of Cambodia and the United Nations to try senior members of the Khmer Rouge for serious violations of Cambodian...
(ECCC) was constituted to investigate the alleged crimes of Democratic Kampuchea. Sambath interviewed Nuon Chea until September 2007 when the latter was arrested and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by the ECCC.
During the same period, Sambath also built up a network of less senior former Khmer Rouge officials and cadres who were prepared to acknowledge and detail their role in the Killing Fields. The film focuses on two Khmer Rouge perpetrators in the northwest of Cambodia. Khoun and Suon take Sambath to the scene of their massacres and introduce him to their superior officer, a woman known as Sister ‘Em’. They give graphic accounts of the massacres they perpetrated. They also give voice to their own feelings of guilt, trauma and remorse. Towards the end of the film Sambath brings Khoun and Suon to meet Nuon Chea and the three former Khmer Rouge comrades try to fathom the history of which they were each a lethal part.
Throughout his three years of research, Sambath omitted to tell Nuon Chea of his family’s fate in Democratic Kampuchea. At the end of the film and just before Nuon Chea’s arrest, Sambath tells the whole story to the former Khmer Rouge leader.
The film also features appearances by Pol Pot
Pol Pot
Saloth Sar , better known as Pol Pot, , was a Cambodian Maoist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea....
, President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
and Deng Yingzhao, the widow of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976...
.
Production
The film was written, directed and filmed by Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath. The pair worked on the film together from September 2006 until November 2009.The film was edited in London by Lemkin and film editor Stefan Ronowicz. The score was composed by Daniel Pemberton.
The film’s world premiere was at the 2009 International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA). The film was slightly altered for its US premiere at the 2010 Sundance
Sundance
Sundance Resort is a ski resort located northeast of Provo, Utah, spanning over on the slopes of Mount Timpanogos in Utah's Wasatch Range. Snow skiing began on the site in 1944...
Film Festival.
It was released theatrically in the US by International Film Circuit on July 31, 2011 and went on to play in over 40 American cities. It has also been theatrically released in Britain, Thailand and the countries of former Yugoslavia. It is the first Cambodian film to be released in Thailand for 40 years. Thai distributors Extra Virgin’s Managing Director Pimpaka Towira said her decision to release the film was difficult at a time when Thailand and Cambodia were engaged in a military conflict.
It has also played more than 80 film festivals worldwide.
Its US television premiere is in the PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
documentary series POV on 12 July 2011.
It has not yet been granted a distribution licence by the Cambodian government, although the film has been shown occasionally at an arthouse cinema in Phnom Penh. In interviews the filmmakers have speculated this is because the history is still too sensitive for the current Cambodian government.
The Film and The Khmer Rouge Tribunal
Following the European and American premieres of the film the Co-Investigating Judge Marcel Lemonde requested the use of the film as evidence in the case he was investigating against Nuon Chea.The filmmakers declined to depose the film with court on the basis that it would be a breach of the understanding reached with all Khmer Rouge sources. All sources were happy for any and all material to be put in the public domain, but only on the basis that neither filmmaker was an officer or agent of the court. The filmmakers were widely criticised for not handing over their material to the court. On April 9, 2010 the court issued an Order stating that it would not seek to obtain the material by international rogatory letter but instead wait until the material came in to the public domain and seek to use it in the trial then.
On June 27, 2011 the trial of Case 002 against Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan
Khieu Samphan
Khieu Samphan was the president of the state presidium of Democratic Kampuchea from 1976 until 1979. As such, he served as Cambodia's head of state and was one of the most powerful officials in the Khmer Rouge movement, though Pol Pot was the group's true political leader and held the most...
, Ieng Sary
Ieng Sary
Ieng Sary was a powerful figure in the Khmer Rouge. He was the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 to 1979 and held several senior positions in the Khmer Rouge until his defection to the government in 1996....
and Ieng Thirith
Ieng Thirith
Ieng Thirith was an influential figure in the Khmer Rouge, but was neither a member of the Khmer Rouge Standing Committee nor of the Central Committee. Her original name is Khieu Thirith...
began in Phnom Penh. A number of newspaper reports raised the issue of the use of the film in the trial. The prosecution told Agence France Presse that it wanted the “candid admissions” to be used in the trial. Thet Sambath speculated that Nuon Chea may not make the same admissions during the trial. “Before the court he may say something else. But what he told me was the truth.”
Distribution in Cambodia
In July 2010 the Cambodian government declined to give the film a permit for distribution in Cambodia. Sin Chin Chaya, Director of the Ministry of Culture’s Cinema Department, said this was because the film was not in Khmer. In fact, much of the film is in Khmer. Many Phnom Penh cinema owners told VOA they were keen to exhibit the film, but needed official permission.The film made its Phnom Penh premiere at the German-owned arthouse cinema Meta House on July 21, 2010. The screening was attended by staff from the court, journalists, NGO workers and politicians including Mu Sochua
Mu Sochua
Mu Sochua is an elected Sam Rainsy Party opposition member of the Cambodian parliament and a mother of three children. In 2005, she received the Leadership Award in Washington, DC, from the Vital Voices Foundation, co-founded by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton...
. Despite its limited release, the film has generated a level of discussion about the Khmer Rouge that is rare in Cambodia.
In March 2011, Sin Chin Chaya told the Wall Street Journal that the permit had not yet been issued because a “formal permission request” had not been submitted. He remarked that since the Khmer Rouge trial was now underway the decision to approve is at ministerial level.
Reception
Cambodian-American Audience ResponseIn January 2010 as a sidebar to the Sundance Festival premieres Sambath and Lemkin showed excerpts of the film to a group of Cambodians living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Many in the audience were refugees from the Killing Fields. Several expressed surprise at their own reactions. Instead of feeling anger and hatred of the perpetrators featured they had feelings of compassion and forgiveness.
Thousands of Cambodians living abroad especially in the US have watched the film. The film was shown in Long Beach
Long Beach
-United States:*Long Beach, California, most populous city with this name**Long Beach Airport**Long Beach Naval Shipyard**Long Beach Search & Rescue**Long Beach Unified School District**Port of Long Beach*Long Beach, Indiana*Long Beach, Minnesota...
, California, the largest urban Cambodian population outside Phnom Penh, in September 2010. Due to the film’s sensitive nature the United Cambodian Community organised a pre-screening meeting to prepare elderly survivors of the Killing Fields for what they would see. The US’s second largest Cambodian population, in Lowell
Lowell
- In the United States :* Lowell, Massachusetts** Lowell National Historical Park** Lowell * Lowell, Arkansas* Lowell, California* Lowell, Florida* Lowell, Indiana* Lowell, Bartholomew County, Indiana* Lowell, Maine* Lowell, Michigan...
, Massachusetts saw the film in November 2010. Another large diaspora community in Minneapolis also saw the film in November. The film is reported to have galvanised ‘ the diaspora to reexamine their country's history and to rethink how to bring reconciliation to the war-torn nation.’
Sambath and Lemkin have attended scores of screenings and live film discussions in the US, Europe and Asia. At the 2010 Sundance Film Festival they participated in a panel on social justice and documentary entitled “Speaking Truth to Power”.
Victims / Perpetrators' Videoconference
In October 2010 Sambath and Lemkin and organised an unprecedented dialogue between survivors of the Killing Fields living in California and three former Khmer Rouge perpetrators. All three had appeared in the film. Khoun, Suon and Choeun travelled to Bangkok in Thailand with Sambath for a live 3 hour discussion held via videoconference with the refugees who attended a legal office in Long Beach, California for the event. According to Lemkin, it was “an end of the Cold War moment. [The victims] have seen the perpetrators as monsters for 30 years. I think they saw that they were just people.”On December 15, 2010 the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
published a major article by Joe Mozingo entitled ‘Coming to terms with Sadism’ which told the story of one man’s experience of the October videoconference. Long Beach resident Bo Uce was 4 when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. He lost several members of his family in the Killing Fields. Uce believed he achieved a ‘certain peace’ in watching the film and then engaging with the perpetrators in the videoconference.
Critical Response
Enemies of the People currently holds a 100% fresh rating on the film site Rotten Tomatoes based on 28 reviews.Andrew Marr
Andrew Marr
Andrew William Stevenson Marr is a Scottish journalist and political commentator. He edited The Independent for two years until May 1998, and was political editor of BBC News from 2000 until 2005....
host of BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
’s Start The Week programme called Enemies of the People “a stunning film – one of the most amazing films I’ve seen ... it’s one of the most gripping and moving films I have ever seen.”
Stephen Holden
Stephen Holden
Stephen Holden is an American writer, music critic, film critic, and poet.Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963...
of the New York Times reviewed the film twice. In his first review he called it “an inspiring film.” In his second review, he writes “Enemies of the People is extraordinary on several fronts. At times, Mr. Thet Sambath suggests a one-man Cambodian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Instead of affixing blame, he seeks the healing power of confession.”
Andrew Schenker in Village Voice noted an antecedent in Holocaust cinema: “Taking in Enemies of the People is a little like watching a Cambodian Shoah
Shoah
Shoah may refer to:*The Holocaust*Shoah , documentary directed by Claude Lanzmann * A Shoah Foundation...
, but as if we had access to the director's methods and motivations instead of just the astonishing results.”
Diego Costa in Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
concentrated on the film’s journey into the psychological dimension of the violence: “This is an extraordinary historical document, an archive of confessions with potential for closure, atonement, and belated punishment from one single man on a mission.”
Gary Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times found the film “fascinating”. “How the genial Sambath remains so circumspect throughout his taut sessions with Chea is remarkable, as is so much of this must-see exposé.”
Elliot Kotek in Moving Pictures wrote: “The slow, painful truth is fully revealed in this burning documentary crafted courageously by Sambath and his co-director Lemkin.”
In the Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
, film critic Nigel Andrews gives the film four out of five stars and sees it in the context of Vietnam War cinema. “War crimes cinema gets a new wrinkle, or scar of honour, in Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath’s enthralling investigative documentary. Shades of Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, as this new Kurtz is tracked to his lair. For Conrad and Coppola the landscape traversed was a jungle. Here it is a jungle of the mind.” In a review from Sundance, the same critic wrote:”If vengeance is a dish best served cold, this dish is at once cold and scalding hot.”
Derek Malcolm in This is London wrote: “This astonishing documentary by Cambodian journalist Thet Sambath, whose entire family was killed by the Khmer Rouge, gets as near as anyone has done to discovering how and why the killing fields happened.”
Time Out’s Derek Adams gives the film five out of five stars: “This is patient, persistent, probing and fearless journalism of the highest order and it shocks to the core.”
David Parkinson in Radio Times sounds a note of caution: The methodology employed by Thet and co-director Rob Lemkin is occasionally manipulative and the truth often remains elusive. But this is absolutely compelling, nonetheless.
David Edwards in the Daily Mirror (UK) is moved by the film’s denouement: “The moment when Sambath reveals the price his own family paid is stirring stuff.”
In The Sun (UK) Grant Rollings goes even further: “Sambath deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. If you see one factual film this year, make it this one”
Ron Wilkinson in Monsters and Critics pays tribute to the journalism: One of the most amazing investigative documentary films of all time. The interviews are few but of the highest quality.
Jared Ferrie focuses on the probative and forensic value of the journalism in the Christian Science Monitor: “In the film, Nuon admits publicly, for the first time, that he ordered the killing of thousands of political opponents, which is probably evidence enough to convict him for war crimes – if he ever makes it to trial.”
Patrick Barta in the Wall Street Journal found it to be “not only … a historical document, but also … a work of art in its own right.”
Awards
Wins2010 Sundance Film Festival World Jury Special Prize
2010 True/False Film Festival True Life Award
2010 Santa Barbara International Film Festival Best Documentary
2010 Santa Barbara International Film Festival Social Justice Award
2010 Vera Film Festival ,Finland Best Documentary
2010 One World Festival (Prague) Grand Jury Prize
2010 Full Frame Festival Anne Dellinger Grand Jury Award
2010 Full Frame Festival Charles E Guggenheim Emerging Artist
2010 Hong Kong International Film Festival Outstanding Documentary Award
2010 Beldocs, Belgrade Best Documentary Award
2010 OxDox (UK) Best Documentary Award
2010 Norwegian Documentary Festival Best Documentary Award
2010 Human Rights Watch Film Festival New York Nestor Almendros Award
2010 Krakow International Flm Festival Silver Horn Award
2010 Jerusalem International Film Festival “In the Spirit of Freedom” Ostrovsky Award
2010 Dokufest Kosovo Human Rights Award
2010 Batumi International Art-House Film Festival Grand Prix
2010 Ojai Film Festival Best Documentary
2010 Moet British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) Best Documentary
2011 DocsBarcelona TV3 Human Rights Award
2011 DocEdge NZ Best International Feature
2011 DocEdge NZ Best Directing
2011 Makedox, Macedonia, Best Human Rights Presentation
2011 Makedox, Macedonia, Award for Best Moral Approach
2011 Knight International Journalism Award
Nominations
2011 Writers Guild of America Best Documentary Screenplay
2009 International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA) Best Feature Documentary
2010 Grierson Award for Best Cinema Documentary
Enemies of the People was shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2011.
In June 2011 the Washington-DC based International Center for Journalists announced that Thet Sambath was the recipient of its 2011 Knight International Journalism Award for his career achievement. In its press release the ICFJ called Enemies of the People ‘arguably the most important film about the Khmer Rouge’. ICFJ President and member of the jury Joyce Barnathan said Sambath’s work was ‘an amazing, amazing journalistic feat’.
Other Responses
The Cambodian-American rapper praCh Ly wrote a song in response to seeing Enemies of the People called "Into The Wild". Ly performed this song at a special screening of the film at Brown University in March 2011.Further Investigation
Thet Sambath and Rob Lemkin have announced they are making a second film based on the material shot for their first film with new material being gathered from new Khmer Rouge sources. The film is entitled “Suspicious Minds” and will investigate the political conflict inside the Khmer Rouge movement that drove the violence. Lemkin has further stated this film will explain for the first time why the Killing Fields happened.Sambath and Lemkin continue to blog on their researches, adding material on Nuon Chea’s early career and Pol Pot’s rise to power in the Khmer Rouge.
In June 2011 they began to upload further interview excerpts with Nuon Chea. Topics so far include: revolution, killing traitors, confessions, smashing, Year Zero, the nation.