S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine

I found this doc. to be disturbing. Not because of the senseless killing of over 1.5 million people, but because members of the Khmer Rouge and their victims could sit in the same room and talk about their roles in this horrible portion of their lives. I would have killed the man that terminated my family in a second... yet they talk about certain prisoners and are not aggressive enough to kill each other, it's just amazing.

I didn't like that it was all subtittles and no voice overs... hard to follow but just brutal.

- rod
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Breakdown

This chilling documentary explores the prison camps where thousands of Cambodians were tortured by Khmer Rouge soldiers in the 1970s. Incorporating accounts from both survivors and the soldiers who abused them, the story unfolds with gritty emotion and understandable reluctance. Photos from the two-year-long killing zone depict some of the 17,000 people who died there and the soldiers who grudgingly carried out the orders.

Review

Not everyone will like this movie. I watched it twice, the first time I turned it off after 30 minutes. I was expecting more of a traditional documentary with a lot of visuals and narrative. What you get here is mostly former guards and a couple of survivors talking about what they did and saw at this camp. They speak their native language and you get subtitles. The second time I started it I had more of an open mind and what I saw really disturbed me on many levels. First the brutality at the camp. Second the utter lack of remorse of the guards who tended to chalk it up to "just taking orders".

Third was the survivors who seemed not to be seeking revenge but some acknowledgment of wrong doing. Remember these guards personally killed these survivors friends and family. And finally, what really shocked me is that these guards, and I understand all of the Khmer Rouge, have been not held accountable for their crimes. These guards talked about killing small children simply because they were the children of an enemy of the state, someone who earned that title through a false confession extracted by torture.