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Five years after the military putsch that brought the Khmer Rouge to power in 1975, famine and state-sponsored genocide had killed nearly a quarter of the Cambodian population. Rithy Panh’s documentary follows two survivors back to S21, a notoriously brutal prison-turned-museum where the former guards now work as tour guides. In long takes amid awkward silence, both victims and oppressors recall the sensual experience of the camp. It’s excruciating to hear the victims narrate their days as a laundry list of torture that reads like a protocol of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò. It’s even more agonizing, however, to watch the former guards blithely re-create their crimes for the camera, screeching at imaginary prisoners in empty cells. More Shoah than Night and Fog, Panh’s film resists cheap histrionics, instead committing to a restrained, laconic visual style. S21 might have benefitted from additional editing and less repetition in the interviews, but Panh still delivers a superb object lesson in Foucaultian power dynamics and humanity at its worst. In Khmer and Vietnamese with English subtitles. (101 minutes)
BY MATTIAS FREY
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