Gibier d’élevage (The Catch). 2011. Cambodia/France. Directed by Rithy Panh. Screenplay by Panh, Michel Fessler, based on the novella by Kenzaburô Ôe. With Cyril Guël, Jhem Chuop, Soeum Chhoeum. In Khmer; English subtitles. 91 min.
Rithy Panh transposes Nobel laureate Kenzaburô Ôe’s novella, a story set at the end of World War II about two Japanese boys and the Black American POW under their watch (Nagisa Oshima had also adapted to film in 1961), to the war in Southeast Asia in 1972. An American fighter pilot crashes in the Cambodian jungle. He is captured by the Khmer Rouge and imprisoned at the bottom of a village well. Gradually and tentatively, the soldier is befriended by some of the villagers, who share his terror of Pol Pot’s army, but his fate lies in the hands of a boy who must choose between his own ambitions and his humanity.