THE MISSING PICTURE (L’IMAGE MANQUANTE) World Cinema

Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh, using dozens of miniature clay figures he painstakingly sculpts by hand, recreates his youth under the Khmer Rouge in this transfixing documentary. Through assembled tableaus featuring the inanimate yet startlingly expressive figurines, Panh takes us through his idyllic childhood growing up in Phnom Penh, his family’s blunt transportation to the countryside when he was a young teenager and his four grueling years of work as a laborer in Pol Pot’s notorious “rehabilitation” camps. Panh stresses that while pictures can be destroyed, ideas and memories can never be stolen. What emerges is a filmmaker coming to terms with his traumatic past, but also his method of reclaiming experience. By creating new pictures, Panh pays tribute to his family’s and country’s history, and celebrates the individualism that regimes like the Khmer Rouge have tried to eradicate. THE MISSING PICTURE won the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and is Cambodia’s official entry for the Foreign-Language Oscar®.