Tue story of the killing fields in Enemies of the People - Film - Arts - Evening Standard
       

Tue story of the killing fields in Enemies of the People

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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.

His method was to befriend Nuon Chea, Pol Pot’s deputy, now an old man waiting to be arrested. Only when months have gone by does Chea decide to answer questions about the past and then explains that the enemies of the revolution, aided by the Vietnamese, had to be stopped in their tracks.

He seems sorry for all the blood but is basically unrepentant. The indiscriminate killing, he says, was not on his orders. Sambath also interviews the traumatised foot soldiers who carried out orders from above, complaining that their arms hurt after cutting so many throats. Claude Lanzmann’s classic Shoah was no more horrifying.

Enemies Of The People

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