The Cinema of Rithy Panh

Everything Has a Soul
Rithy Panh, a survivor of Cambodia's civil war and the Khmer Rouge regime, has earned a world-wide reputation for his innovative work in both fiction and documentary film. Bringing together a wide range of renowned interdisciplinary scholars, this book explores the scope of Panh's career.
Nominated for 2022 South Atlantic Modern Language Association Book award

Born in 1964, Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh grew up in the midst of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal reign of terror, which claimed the lives of many of his relatives. After escaping to France, where he attended film school, he returned to his homeland in the late 1980s and began work on the documentaries and fiction films that have made him Cambodia’s most celebrated living director.

The fourteen essays in The Cinema of Rithy Panh explore the filmmaker’s unique aesthetic sensibility, examining the dynamic and sensuous images through which he suggests that “everything has a soul.” They consider how Panh represents Cambodia’s traumatic past, combining forms of individual and collective remembrance, and the implications of this past for Cambodia’s transition into a global present. Covering documentary and feature films, including his literary adaptations of Marguerite Duras and Kenzaburō Ōe, they examine how Panh’s attention to local context leads to a deep understanding of such major themes in global cinema as justice, imperialism, diaspora, gender, and labor. 

Offering fresh takes on masterworks like The Missing Picture and S-21 while also shining a light on the director’s lesser-known films, The Cinema of Rithy Panh will give readers a new appreciation for the boundless creativity and ethical sensitivity of one of Southeast Asia’s cinematic visionaries.

Contributor: Leslie Barnes (Edited by), Jennifer Cazenave (Contributions by), Lindsay French (Contributions by), Stephanie Benzaquen-Gautier (Contributions by), Rachel Harrison (Contributions by), Joseph Mai (Edited by), John Kleinen (Contributions by), David LaRocca (Contributions by), Cathy J. Schlund-Vials (Contributions by), Donald Reid (Contributions by), Boreth Ly (Contributions by), Raya Morag (Contributions by), Khatharya Um (Contributions by), Jack A. Yeager (Contributions by), Soko Phay (Contributions by), Vicente Sánchez-Biosca (Contributions by), Joseph Mai (Contributions by), Leslie Barnes (Contributions by)

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