Cambodia: “I seek my childhood like a lost picture” — Review of the Documentary The Missing Picture — The North Star Reports, sponsored by The Middle Ground Journal. By Cait Greeley

Cambodia: “I seek my childhood like a lost picture” — Review of the Documentary The Missing Picture — The North Star Reports, sponsored by The Middle Ground Journal. By Cait Greeley

The Cambodian documentary, The Missing Picture, directed by Rithy Pahn, offers a terribly beautiful portrayal of a dark time in Khmer history. The title comes from the opening scene in the film, which features a room filled with old rolls of water-damaged film in rusted and deteriorated film cases. These rolls hold the history of the Khmer Rouge regime and its devastating impact on the people of Cambodia . It sets the stage for the rest of the movie as it reveals a lost time and voided past- a “missing picture.”

The scenes throughout the film consist of clay figurines placed into physical land features that include the presence of natural elements like water, rain, trees, and fields. The…