Quotes from Rithy Panh

It is only by reflecting on the past that one can create a better future.

I think that, as a filmmaker, you're always making the same film, regardless of how many different stories you tell. This is the case for me, whether I'm making documentaries or fiction films.

People of my generation did not like very much to tell what we lived through during the Khmer Rouge regime.

When I do feature films, I usually have a very strong sense of what I want to do. I have topics and subjects, so I go for it. I even know technically what I want to. But in the case of documentary, the story comes to me.

'S21' was a film about corporeal memory and how the same gestures repeated many times years earlier can be reawakened.

The Khmer Rouge can't destroy me. I still have my imagination and am capable of making films. I am not locked up.

To find money to make a film, you have to write maybe 50 pages to explain what you'd like to do, what the film will be, but everybody lies. Because he doesn't know what the film will be. Everybody writes 50 pages and sends it to a TV channel, a producer, to get money, but everybody lies. Or else your film is not interesting.

As children, we did not have toys. We invented characters and animals; we invented stories.

Of course, when you're making a documentary, you don't have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room.

Filming, for me, is a way of approaching, little by little - of getting closer and closer to my subject. And that subject itself can transform, or it can remain the same.

To me, form is not something that you can plan beforehand, especially for a documentary. You can't write it or sketch it. It requires a confrontation with reality, with history, with ethics and morals. After identifying good content, you have to find the right form to express that content.

Film is subjective, and we must be careful with that. The kinds of films I love are those that observe, and I give possibility for people to talk. No need for me to tell people what to think - even when I make a film like 'S-21.' It's only one point of view. It's still a film; it's not a tribunal.

'The Missing Picture' came together slowly, after much provocation and by refusing different forms, until I finally found the right form.

There is no book-learning culture in Cambodia. People do not read. The children do not read in school. Educators must come up with a policy that meets the great need for knowledge: using modern audiovisual methods that the young can connect with.

I love archival films very much. I spent thousands of hours watching archive footage. Every time I see it, I see something. Sometimes I think I know this footage, but two years later, I see it again, and I see something new.

'The Missing Picture' is about my story and my parents. Before this film, I never said 'I' in a film, so it is very personal.

The Khmer Rouge tried to delete everything. They tried to erase our past, our personality, our land, our sentiment. What we tried to do in 'The Missing Picture' was to reconstruct our identity, to bring it back to the people through cinema.

With 'The Missing Picture,' we'd shot for a year and a half already when this idea of the clay figurine, the life that comes from the earth, came to me, and I changed everything.

The most beautiful thing in Cambodia isn't the country - it's the Cambodian people.

In this era of digital special effects, I think it's good to work with our hands and our hearts, to use water and clay, to dry it in the air from the sun. This brings you back to the element of life.

Sometimes if you can tell one personal story with a lot of sincerity, it can become a universal story.

For the young generation, when they see that there is a film director from Cambodia to go on to be nominated, for them, a lot can change. I don't know another way to restore our identity if it's not art.

When we pray to Buddha, we are not praying to a piece of stone, an image of Buddha, but we pray to the soul of Buddha behind the piece of stone. The souls of the people who are dead now are still with us.

If you can keep something very personal, like a song, like a color, like a story, deep in your heart, then nobody can destroy that. Nobody can destroy your imagination; nobody can destroy your love.