First They Killed My Father (2017)

I just watched the movie: "First They Killed My Father" by director, Angelina Jolie. I read the book with the same name years ago. Both the book and film are the true story of Loung Ung surviving the Cambodian Genocide (the Communist Khmer Rouge murdered 2.2 million men, women and children from 1975-1979) from when she was 5 years old until she was 10 years old.

Her and her family (her parents and six brothers and sisters) lived a middle-class life in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh until April 17, 1975 when the Khmer Rouge entered the city and forced all 2 million people out of the capital and into re-education camps in the jungles. Her mother was ethnically Chinese and her father was a high-ranking official for the former Cambodian Government. For those reasons the children were made to assume false identities and go to different work camps. I won't saw what else happened to the family (read and/or watch the book/movie for that.

The Khmer Rouge targeted anyone with connections to the former Cambodian government, or foreign governments (like the French or American), professionals, teachers, Buddhist monks, Khmer Catholics, the ethnic Thai, the ethnic Vietnamese, the ethnic Chinese, students, doctors, anyone who spoke a second language (even though many people spoke French since Cambodia was part of French Indochina from 1887-1954) and anyone who wore glasses.

The Khmer Rouge were eventually defeated by Communist Vietnam in 1979. The Vietnamese had to create a currency, educational system, health system, political system, industry, etc. from scratch since they were all outlawed and destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. The Vietnamese left Cambodia in 1989. The leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, fled to the jungles when the Vietnamese came- where he died under house arrest in 1998 (it is believed he committed suicide when he learned the Khmer Rouge were going to hand him over to an International Tribunal for his genocidal crimes.)

The current Prime Minister of Cambodia, Han Sen (in office since 1998) was a member of the Khmer Rouge.