The Missing Picture

A 2014 Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, The Missing Picture recounts director Rithy Panh’s firsthand experience witnessing his family and friends' suffering from the communist regime when the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. It tells the story of how citizens were rounded up and taken to labour camps as their personal effects were destroyed. Since most of the existing recorded artifacts of that time were propaganda footage, Panh utilizes beautifully sculpted clay figurines and elaborately detailed dioramas to recreate the missing images from his memory. His recollections of his family and friends before and after the regime’s rule are poignantly told through poetic narration. The Missing Picture is a unique documentary that manages to recreate a historical moment that would never be told if not for Panh’s creative mind and innovative storytelling.

In French, with English subtitles.