Les tombeaux sans noms (Graves Without a Name). 2018. Cambodia/France. Directed by Rithy Panh. In French, Khmer; English subtitles. 115 min.
Rithy Panh undertakes the Sisyphean—as in, absurdist and impossible—task of finding his family’s unmarked graves in the Killing Fields of Cambodia decades after his father, a deputy to the former Minister of Education and a senator; his mother, sisters, and other family members; and upwards of 1.5 million others were murdered by the Pol Pot regime. Today, farmers continue to unearth bone fragments and tattered scraps of clothing belonging to the unidentified victims of the Khmer Rouge. As Panh interviews other survivors of genocide, with their harrowing accounts of starvation, forced labor, and routine execution, the film becomes a painful and necessary meditation on “impossible mourning” and baksbat, or broken courage: the need to remember and resist in the face of collective trauma, political demagogery, and crimes against humanity. Courtesy Playtime