Film recalls Cambodia's Killing Fields

Socheata Poeuv once asked her father what was the worst part about living under the Khmer Rouge. He told her it was the silence.

Today, Ms. Poeuv is breaking that silence. Her film, New Year Baby , is giving a voice not only to her father's story, but to the estimated 1.7 million to 2 million people who died in Cambodia's Killing Fields.

Her film, which captures the heart-wrenching story of her family's survival, is being screened at 5:30 tonight and again at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Angelika Film Center as part of the AFI Dallas International Film Festival.

Ms. Poeuv and her parents are scheduled to be at the Saturday screening. It will be the first time her parents have seen the completed film.

"My parents didn't talk much about that period of their life in Cambodia," the filmmaker said from New York, where she now lives.

She said she had read only a few passing references about the Killing Fields.

"But I never heard my parents talk about it," she said. "I would ask questions once in a while, but they would always find ways to dodge answering. I think it was too painful for them to talk about it. I think they were desperately trying to forget the past."

In 1975, the Khmer Rouge communist group came to power in Cambodia. Its goal was to create an agrarian utopia. Instead, under the leadership of Pol Pot, between 1975 and 1979 an estimated 1.7 million to 2 million Cambodians were killed or died of starvation.

To this day, not a single member of the Khmer Rouge has been put on trial for crimes from that period. Of the hundreds of thousands who survived the Killing Fields, many left their homeland and escaped to makeshift refugee camps along the Thai border.

Many, like Ms. Poeuv and her family, would be relocated to the U.S. In 1982, Ms. Poeuv, her parents, two older sisters and a brother were resettled in Carrollton. Ms. Poeuv was just 2 years old.

Because she was born on the Cambodian New Year in the refugee camp, Ms. Poeuv said, her family always considered her the lucky one. But, she said, she had not fully realized how lucky she was.

Growing up in Carrollton, Ms. Poeuv became fully assimilated in the American lifestyle. Sometimes her parents, who tried to maintain some of their old Cambodian customs in their new homeland, embarrassed her.

"I thought they were 'old country,' " Ms. Poeuv said. "My parents would make us go to temple on Saturdays and Bible study on Sundays. My mother stored stinky fermented fish under the sink, and my father watched Cambodian videos."

"There were times when I felt like an outsider in my own family," she said. The R.L. Turner High School graduate used school to escape.

Ms. Poeuv graduated cum laude from Smith College in 2002 and studied for a year at Oxford University. She settled in New York, where she worked for NBC and ABC.

However, during a family reunion a few years ago, Ms. Poeuv's parents revealed a painful secret that would change her life.

"My mother said that my two older sisters, Mala and Leakhena, aren't actually my sisters but that they were my cousins," Ms. Poeuv said. "She said that they were the children of her sister and brother-in-law who had been killed by the Khmer Rouge. Then she said my brother, Scott, isn't my full brother, but that he is my half brother. She said Scott is from her marriage to another man. My mother's first husband and a daughter had died in the genocide."

According to Ms. Poeuv, Mala and Leakhena seemed to be relieved that the truth was now out in the open. Her half brother was just as surprised as Ms. Poeuv.

Her parents' revelation raised more questions than it answered. She was also haunted by the fact that there are many others like her who don't know the story of the Killing Fields.

"Everyone seemed determined to sweep it under the rug, as if they had done something wrong, or that they were to blame for what happened. So I became determined to document the full story," Ms. Poeuv said.

After the family secret was revealed, their parents invited Ms. Poeuv and her brother to go back to Cambodia for the first time.

Her film documents the trip, which traced her family members' journey from their homes to forced labor camps – and their escape on foot through the jungle to Thailand.

"Somewhere along the way, I discovered that the secrets they held in shame also proved their great heroism," she said.

Today, Ms. Poeuv is determined that the world not forget what happened in Cambodia.
Pol Pot died before he could be brought to trial, but Ms. Poeuv wants the Khmer Rouge brought to justice.

She is developing an archival project to document the testimonies of Cambodian Khmer Rouge survivors.

New Year Baby, which marks Ms. Poeuv's directing debut, has already won several awards, including Amnesty International's Movies That Matter Human Rights Award and the best documentary prize at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. The film has also been selected for inclusion in PBS' Independent Lens series.

Ms. Poeuv's documentary is one of 190 features and short films that will be shown during the AFI Dallas International Film Festival, which continues through Sunday. For a complete schedule, see www.afidallas.com or call 214-720-0555 .