116'2018France, Cambodiadirector: Rithy Panhcinematography: Rithy Panh, Prum Mésarediting: Rithy Panhproduction: Catherine Dussart Production
Rithy Panh about the victims of the Khmer Rouge in nameless graves.
Forty years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, hardly any of the victims' families know where their relatives are buried. Combing through the earth just beneath the surface, it's easy enough to find somebody’s traces—buttons, scraps of clothing, bones. Graves without a Name, Rithy Panh's (2007 Marek Nowicki prize winner) latest personal film, is a physical and spiritual journey in search of the end of mourning. Buddhist rituals, summoning ghosts—with a moving scene where the spirit of a man recognizes his son—mesmerizing stories by witnesses to genocide, the vivisection of what is left of defaced villages, visual and verbal poetry: the purpose of all of this is to console, at least a little, both the living and the dead.
