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FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER

A daughter of cambodia remembers.

by Loung Ung ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2000

A rare, chilling eyewitness account of the bloody aftermath of the Khmer Rouge’s merciless victory over the Cambodian government in April 1975, as seen through the eyes of a precocious child. The author—national spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation’s“Campaign for a Landmine Free World— program, whose activities won her the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize—was, in 1970, the five-year-old daughter of a Cambodian government official when her loving, close-knit, middle-class family of seven children first learned of the Khmer Rouge’s approach to their hometown of Phnom Penh. The family fled, constantly moving, trying to hide their identity as educated urban people who would be regarded by their agrarian enemies as “exploiters.— Eventually they were captured, robbed, beaten, half- starved, and sent to forced-labor camps. In time, Loung’s father and mother were killed, her older sister and baby sister died of malnutrition and disease, and her older brothers and she were recruited to serve the Khmer Rouge. The genocidal fury endured by Loung’s family and other families caused a widespread and lasting hatred of the Khmer Rouge. Her surviving relatives split up to avoid being executed together, and through their courage and resourcefulness managed to stay alive despite the bloodbath. In time, Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia and Pol Pot’s forces were destroyed, but not before millions of Cambodians perished. Ung, her older brother, and his family were rescued by a humanitarian group and came to the US to build a new life; ultimately, the surviving family members would meet again. A harrowing true story of the nightmare world that was Cambodia in those terrible times of mass murder and slow death through overwork, starvation, and disease. Will affect even readers who cannot find Ung’s homeland on a map. (8 pages b&w photos)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-06-019332-8

Page Count: 256

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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BOOK REVIEW

by Loung Ung

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY

More by Elie Wiesel

by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen

by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal

by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

From mean streets to wall street.

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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Book Review: “First They Killed My Father” by Loung Ung

Loung Ung had it all-- two loving parents, warm dinners, and a house full of siblings. Although her family wasn't the richest in the neighborhood, they certainly weren't struggling to put food on the table, either. But at the end of the Khmer Rouge's reign, she had nearly lost everything. Her haunting tale is documented in her memoir, "First They Killed My Father," and her aching words speak for both herself and the thousands of Cambodian souls lost along the way. 

Loung Ung was only five when Cambodia's political landscape began to shift. The rise of dictator Pol Pot left her community torn and troubled as people began to pick sides. Loung's father, a well-known official and an educated man, found himself and his family at risk simply for his prominence and knowledge. The Ung family left their city with hundreds of others. Unbeknownst to them, their exodus from their home city marked the beginning of the end. 

Although the true (and frighteningly recent) story of the Khmer Rouge is already horrifying enough, Ung makes the pain even more real for her readers by choosing to write her narrative from the first-person perspective of herself as a young girl. If there is anything more heartbreaking than the mass murder of a country, it is hearing the tales of forced labor and physical violence from the voice of a child who is unable to process the horrors that are happening to her and her family. 

Ung's unbreakable link between the historical aspects of Pol Pot's reign and her emotional connection to the tragedies that befell her turn   "First They Killed My Father" into a truly staggering memoir. Those that liked the book and want to further their knowledge about the Cambodian genocide may also be interested in Netflix's film adaption of Ung's memoir, which can be found under the same title as the book. 

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Three Books Review: “First They Killed My Father”

It seems impossible that any sort of journalistic lede could possibly do justice to Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, when its Communist leaders massacred a quarter of the nation’s people. Faced with a similar display of evil at the Buchenwald concentration camp, the finest reporter of his era could only say: “For most of it, I have no words.” The same most certainly applies to Cambodia — a so-called “Democratic Kampuchea”– from 1975 to 1979. The word “repressive” doesn’t quite capture the sadistic quality of it, and “mindless” ignores its ideological underpinnings. No words can truly express the evil that ran amok under the Cambodian regime, so why try?

It’s not as though words are necessary. The Khmer Rouge was composed of fastidious record-keepers, and today Cambodia remembers its holocaust through all the documents of genocide: photos of the dead, personal histories, false confessions and cabinets full of human skulls. But for those that insist on words, it seems almost more descriptive to use the terms that the Khmer Rouge falsely claimed for itself: “equitable,” when the revolution simply swapped one social structure for another; “visionary,” as though mass murder could be called visionary; “democratic” — and here we are reminded that if a government must call itself democratic, it probably isn’t.

The most terrifying fact about the Cambodian killing fields, though, is that they are nothing new. In her memoir of the Khmer Rouge, “First They Killed My Father,” Loung Ung never mentions the Nazi Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide, but one’s mind drifts inexorably to these crimes nonetheless. As Ung transitions from comfortable city girl to orphan stumbling around the countryside, the ghosts of atrocities past reach out to us. Perhaps that is because the Cambodian genocide occupies an undeservedly minor space in the American psyche; nevertheless, the key point is that its darkness is not alien to us.

Ung does not pretend in any way, shape or form to give a definitive account of the Cambodian horror. Why would she need to? Thrown into starker relief, then, is the greater crime of the human spirit — that even after so many horrors, yet another genocide was allowed to occur.

In this vein, Ung reasons further: If genocide is shocking enough, why not make it more shocking by telling it through a child’s eyes? But the incongruity of a child experiencing such worldly pains, envisioned as the book’s greatest asset, is actually its greatest fault. In a sense, Ung portrays a child far too well. The book reads in the same way that little girls and boys talk — far too much description and thoughts flying every which way, coherent but a dream.

Everything is told; nothing is shown. Paragraphs are disconnected more often than not. Perhaps that is part of the point. But children are really not that good to talk to, and by sounding like a child Ung sacrifices some of her credibility.

The book, put simply, is badly written. Portraying the sheer inanity of the mind of a five-year-old is a very questionable decision on Ung’s part. I hesitate to declare the book not worth reading, because it is; things get rolling as soon as we leave the industrial capital of Phnom Penh, and Ung’s stark description of the faces of evil leaves little more to be desired, if only because of evil’s sheer undesirability.

But readers cannot be faulted for putting the book down within the first 50 pages or so. Ung seems caught between remembering an idealized pre-Communist Cambodia and documenting her trials in the years that followed. The book only declares itself towards the latter when the eponymous father dies. Meanwhile Ung maintains her insistence on the child narrative. In the end, the Wikipedia article on the Khmer Rouge is more informative and more readable — in this case, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Indeed, with the book complete, the reader is left with more questions than before. From the perspective of a child, war seems totally senseless, and indeed on a certain fundamental level it is. But that fact fails to adequately explain why people rise in revolution and fight wars. Ung describes her pre-Communist life as an idyll, and perhaps for her family it was  — well-off, her father a government man, cosmopolitan city dwellers all. The Khmer Rouge ultimately betrayed its own people, but from where did it derive its power? Surely not all Cambodians were as contented with the prewar government as Ung’s family was.

Many people actually supported the Khmer Rouge; the question, then, is why? While nobody expects Ung to support revolution or murder, her refusal to acknowledge the underpinnings of the upheaval that led to darkness makes her life seem not idyllic but cripplingly out of touch. Ung’s passing mentions of the restless countryside are even more frustrating in this regard: She could explain more, but she simply won’t.

In the end, Ung’s description of horror is far more compelling, although — similarly to the exposition — the plot leaves us somewhat adrift with regards to context. At the time, Ung did not know the context of the tragedy surrounding her, but the context does matter to us readers because, unlike her, we can actually make use of it.

Ung argues implicitly that ideology and self-awareness are irrelevant to a child. She is right, but hers is not a children’s book. Any book on the Cambodian genocide, especially one as bluntly titled as “First They Killed My Father,” is a book for adults and an inseparably political book. Ung does her readers a disservice by claiming that the hopes and dreams of people other than her family are immaterial to the narrative. Knowing that a crime occurred is meaningless; knowing how and why it did helps us prevent it from happening again.

Someday, words will be written that fully capture the horror and madness of the Khmer Rouge, that ignoble brother of the Holocaust. Ung’s memory, however, is not that book. Still, one must imagine that when that book is written, its writer will have been standing on the shoulders of the proverbial giants — giants such as a small little girl from a big city who suffered things that we can hardly imagine.

Winston Shi was the Managing Editor of Opinions for Volume 245 (February-June 2014). He also served as an opinions and sports columnist, a senior staff writer, and a member of the Editorial Board. A native of Thousand Oaks, California (the one place on the planet with better weather than Stanford), he graduated from Stanford in June 2016 with bachelor's and master's degrees in history. He is currently attending law school, where he preaches the greatness of Stanford football to anybody who will listen, and other people who won't.

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• Books on Cambodia

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

By luong ung, 2000, my rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

“I think how the world is still somehow beautiful even when I feel no joy at being alive within it.”

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links.  As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.  Please see this website’s  Disclosure  for more info.

There are so many memoirs written by victims of the Khmer Rouge that it’s hard to figure out which one to read.

First They Killed My Father ( Amazon | Bookshop.org ) has the advantage of having been turned into a movie directed by Angelina Jolie, so it’s more well-known than others.

Some people might be turned off by this fact. However, it was made into a movie simply because it’s a good story. You won’t go wrong starting here. A well-written, moving, and emotionally gut-wrenching book. You can feel what the narrator is feeling—her anger, her sadness, her hatred, but also her love for her family. It’s hard not to be emotionally pulled into the story and not to come out feeling more empathetic than you were before reading the book.

For more books on Cambodia, check out my post of the 25 Best Books Cambodia: Read Before You Go!

Book Summary

The author, Luong Ung, was five years old when on April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh and forced everyone including her parents and six brothers and sisters to leave the city for the countryside. Like many city families, they eventually ended up in a labor camp in the northwest, the area of the country that experienced the worst of the four years under the Khmer Rouge (1975 – 1979).

There is one important thing about the family that makes their situation more tenuous than most. The father was a high-ranking military officer in the Lon Nol government. If found out, he would surely be killed. The father is smart, though, and he keeps the family moving, evading discovery. Anytime he senses danger, they change camps.

You know from the title of the book that the father’s background will eventually catch up to him. Knowing this from the beginning doesn’t detract from the story. In fact, it gives it an added sense of suspense. You know it will happen; you just don’t know when.

My Thoughts

I have to admit that one thought kept on going through my mind as I read this book: She was 5 years old when these events started. How was she able to remember it all? How accurate is her account of events?

Having read several other books on the Cambodian Genocide like Survival in the Killing Fields and When the War Was Over . I found that most of what she writes is consistent with other books.

Also, can we ever be sure of what really happens in our own lives? Reality can often be perceived differently by different people. A former reporter for the New York Times, Tim Carr, wrote a book called The Night of The Gun . In it, he mentions that his recollection of events that he swears happened at a particular time and a particular order are true, while he finds that when asking other people about the same events, they recall events happening in a completely different way.

I think we can take all memoirs as a reflection of someone’s perception of what happened. That’s all they are and that’s generally good with me as long as they didn’t invent things intentionally like James Fry did in A Million Little Pieces . So probably her account is not much more accurate or less accurate than an adults’.

If you’re planning on a trip to Cambodia and want to read a book on Cambodia to better understand the country, I highly recommend adding First They Killed My Father to your reading list. It’s one of the best memoirs written about the time Cambodia was under the Khmer Rouge. It will also give you an understanding of what it must have felt like to be one of the 2 million victims of the Khmer Rouge.

Even if you have no plans on visiting Cambodia, First They Killed My Father is still an important book to read. It will help you get an idea of what happens to a country when it falls under an autocratic regime that puts ideology above people.

Audio Version

I’ve read the book twice. The first time was in the print version and the second time in audio. The print version is of course terrific. The audio is also good. I would have preferred someone of Cambodian descent to have narrated, but overall, the narrator did a decent job with the different voices. Her voice is also youthful-sounding enough to go with the age of Loung of five years old. The best part of the audio version is that you learn how to pronounce everyone’s Cambodian name.

Main Characters

The best advice I can give you is to pay attention to the names of all the family members at the beginning, so you can keep them straight as you read along. There are 7 children along with the father and mother and aunt and uncle.

• Loung – narrator; 5 years old at the beginning of the book
• Pa – father; half Cambodian half Chinese; a major in the military
• Ma – mother; Chinese ancestry
• Meng – oldest brother; 18 years old; responsible, reliable, and kind
• Khoi – 16 years old; other siblings fear him
• Keav – 14 years old; beautiful
• Kim – 10 years old; small and quick
• Chou – 8 years old; quiet, shy, and obedient
• Gaek – 3 years old; adorable

Favorite Quotes

“I think how the world is still somehow beautiful even when I feel no joy at being alive within it. ”

“In my heart I know the truth, but my mind cannot accept the reality of what this all means.”

“This is what the war has done to me. Now I want to destroy because of it. There is such hate and rage inside me now. The Angkar has taught me to hate so deeply that I now know I have the power to destroy and kill.”

About the Author – Loung Ung

Loung Ung is an author, human rights activist and public speaker. She was born in Cambodia in 1970. She came to the United States in the summer of 1980 as a refugee, settling down in Vermont. She attended St. Michael’s College in Vermont. She has worked on projects to end violence against women, to stop the use of child soldiers, and to eradicate landmines. Along with First They Killed My Father , she has also written two sequels about her life: Lucky Child and Lulu in the Sky .

Travel Posts on Cambodia

• Cambodia Itinerary: An Ideal Guide for Temple & Island Hoppers
• An Angkor Wat Itinerary That Will Delight History Lovers
• Phnom Penh Itinerary: The Perfect Guide for History Lovers

More Great Books on Cambodia

Here is a list of more of my favorite books on Cambodia :

• Survival in the Killing Fields – Haing Ngor (the movie The Killing Fields was based on the book)
• When the War Was Over – By Elizabeth Becker
• When Broken Glass Floats – By Chanrithy Him
• A History of Cambodia – By David Chandler
• Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare – By Philip Short

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Book Review: First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

Travel Book Reviews / November 14, 2016 by fulltimeexplorer / 4 Comments

I was googling things to do in Cambodia when I came across a webpage featuring a description of what it was like to visit the killing fields while backpacking through the country. My curiosity kicked in, and I began researching the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, and the genocide in Cambodia. It’s a subject I’m embarrassed to say I knew almost nothing about. It wasn’t until I began reading First They Killed My Father that I realized, a majority of young Americans have never even heard of Pol Pot. Every time a friend asked me what I was reading, I got blank stares back. Then, I would begin to tell the history of Cambodia, and people were shocked.

First They Killed My Fathe r is a historical biography written by Loung Ung, who was four years old when the Khmer Rouge overthrew the government in Cambodia. Lucky to have a very wise father who knew how to act under the new regime, they were able to avoid the first of many killings. Her family lived in the city of Phnom Penh, was fairly wealthy, and well educated. The exact people that were being targeted. The Khmer Rouge tried to rid the country of anyone who would be able to rebel or who was smart enough to overthrow them. They would brutally murder people who wore glasses simply because they looked intelligent.

Forced to leave their home and walk for days, they had to leave behind all of their belongings except the items they could carry on their backs. In an instant, money is as valuable as toilet paper and only survival matters. After several days, they arrive at their destination in the countryside where they are given new clothes and job assignments. Treated like animals, they are forced to work seventeen hour days and in exchange are rationed small amounts of rice. Anyone who complains or can’t keep up is sent to a special camp where they never return. Word begins to spread that those who are educated are being killed as well as those who are weak. After surviving for years through near starvation, the family is split up and each person has to fight for their own survival.

Loung’s story is honest and thought provoking. She shares her deep rooted regrets over stealing a handful of rice from her family, while at the same time is completely desensitized to death. She shares her nightmares as a child and her deep hatred that drives her to want to kill. The story of Cambodia and it’s history leaves you sad and shocked, but it’s Loung’s personal story that is truly moving. The effects of war, starvation, and death on a young child makes you wonder how she was able to survive. This book is a must read for anyone who plans to visit Cambodia.

Don’t have time to sit down and read a book? Check out audible! You can sign up for a 30-day free trial and get two books free by clicking the banner below! If it’s not for you, you can cancel any time. This is a great option if you’re on the road or commuting and want to listen as you go.

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First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

• Publication Date: January 1, 2001
• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• ISBN-10: 0060931388
• ISBN-13: 9780060931384
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First They Killed My Father: When the Earth is Made of Bones

First They Killed My Father : A Memoir

I still haven’t been able to write about visiting the Killing Fields of Cambodia and walking on top of unearthed bones 40 years after the ground ran red with blood, so I’m forever impressed with author Loung Ung who lived through the horror and is, somehow, able to expose the dark details in painful but necessary prose in First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.

The book received some criticism for historical inaccuracies, but given that this is the memoir of a person who was driven from her home, separated from her family, and trained as a child soldier – all before reaching the tender age of 10 – it is the raw trauma through the lens of that child that should be the focus and the lesson.

We must accept the unique experience of the child – who guides us through a world where murder and rape are more predictable than food rations – as truth in memory . And memories are fickle and fleeting, no matter how painful and vivid they are.

I’m grateful to Loung Ung for digging into those memories, and for reminding the world of what happened in Cambodia, and for specifically reminding the Western world. Speaking as an American born just one year after Cambodia was liberated from the clutches of the Khmer, this is a genocide that didn’t make it into our history lessons.

It wasn’t until I went to the Killing Fields and to the Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh that I realized the full extent of the genocide and our “Secret War”. From 1969-1970 alone, in an effort to cut off the underground supply chain known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the U.S. dropped more bombs on Cambodia (and Laos) than we used in all of World War II.

And it wasn’t just the landmines that were left behind when the United States finally ended the onslaught, and the Vietnamese abandoned the tunnels carved into the countryside of Cambodia. 

A power vacuum was left wide open, and it was eagerly and opportunistically filled by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge who set out to build their “perfect agrarian society”, while the United States kept war-weary eyes on Vietnam and called home her troops.

First They Killed My Father : Summarized

I usually declare “no spoilers” right about here in my book reviews , but we’re working with a tale in which the title itself is a spoiler.

Driven from their home and forced to move with a mass exodus of people toward an unknown destination in the countryside, the Ung family worked to hide their middle-class identity and their educated status in a world in which “elites” were so hunted that one could be executed for the simple act of wearing eyeglasses.

Nearly all residents were pushed out of Phnom Penh, and one in four will not return. Just imagine that.

Of course, the Ung family is desperately focused on their own plight rather than that of the nation. Labor camps, starvation, deathly illnesses, and the whims of murderous Khmer Rouge soldiers await.

Ultimately, Loung Ung’s mother will make the heart-breaking decision to send her very young children walking in opposite directions, claiming to be orphans, in the hopes that some will survive. The miracle is that some do.

The pain, resilience, loyalty, anger, and love that vibrates through this book makes it a pageturner – no matter how hard the reality of the situation is to comprehend.

There are times when Ung “transports” to “see” the deaths of her family members, citing a keen intuition. So it is that we are presented with the facts of fate rather than what probably happened. That part was hard for me to swallow, but I reason with it this way: If I had no idea what happened to my father other than that he was taken away to never return, wouldn’t I need to assign him a fate? No matter how awful? I think I would, indeed.

But it is for this reason, that I like the movie First They Killed My Father directed by Angelina Jolie a bit better than the book. This isn’t to say that the book isn’t excellent. It’s just that the movie provides that third-person perspective into the fate of the family that the book isn’t able to provide.

Who Should Read First They Killed My Father

Everyone should read this book. But I especially urge Americans to read First They Killed My Father or, at a minimum, watch the movie. Certainly, anybody with Angkor Wat on their travel bucket list should include a trip to Phnom Penh and should read this memoir.

If you enjoy audible books, I listened to the audible version of First They Killed My Father narrated by Tavia Gilbert. The narration was very good.

If you are grieving the loss of a loved one as I am , you may relate to Ung’s incredulity that the world could still spin and that the sun could still set with astounding beauty over the day when her father was killed.

About Author Loung Ung

Loung Ung is a writer, speaker, and advocate who works for a landmine-free world. In addition to First They Killed My Father , Ung wrote Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind and Lulu in the Sky .

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First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

Loung ung, ung. harpercollins publishers, $23.95 (256pp) isbn 978-0-06-019332-4.

Reviewed on: 01/31/2000

Genre: Nonfiction

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First They Killed My Father review – Angelina Jolie's triumph spotlights casualties of war

The actor turned director’s passion project is a psychological stunner that shows the effects the Khmer Rouge’s reign left on the people of Cambodia

W hatever may be thought of Angelina Jolie and the controversial way she auditioned young people for this particular film – a Netflix production which airs later this month – she has created an accomplished piece of work which is possessed of a genuine artistry. It is something to compare to the films of Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung , especially the dreamily sensual epiphanies of The Scent Of Green Papaya (1993) and At The Height Of Summer (2000).

The action is set in Cambodia , a country with which Jolie famously has a personal connection; her 16-year-old adopted Cambodian son Maddox is credited as an executive producer. Jolie has adapted the 2000 memoir by Cambodian author Loung Ung, about growing up in the mid-to-late 70s at the time of the Khmer Rouge’s campaign of violence, which wiped out one quarter of the country’s population.

Newcomer Sareum Srey Moch plays Loung, a little girl whose father is a policeman under the old US-backed regime. When the Khmer Rouge arrive in revolutionary triumph, her terrified parents (played by Phoeung Kompheak and Sveng Socheata) realise that they must efface any hint that they were once the hirelings of a government for which the newcomers have a fanatical loathing .

The father must pretend that he is just a manual labourer when the zealots come round looking for people to kill or throw into “re-education camps”; he must forget that he ever spoke French, the language of the oppressor, despite KR soldiers jeeringly speaking to him in French, trying to get him to crack. The family are brusquely taken away and set to back-breaking physical work on an agricultural collective. But the point is not to grow food; it is to feel ashamed and afraid, and to reinforce the new rulers’ theatre of cruelty and power.

The children are always hungry; there is a hair-raising scene when a horribly big spider is caught, cooked and eaten. With cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, Jolie contrives some eerily beautiful overhead shots showing their ideological fear farm from above: the people working there do indeed look like insects. When Loung’s sister dies, her mother is allowed no more than a few seconds to weep, then she must continue to work. Loung’s other sibling explains to her the idea of reincarnation: the dead person stays intensely asleep for three days, then realises she is dead, goes to the river and then prepares to return. Loung replies grimly that she hopes her sister does not return – to this. Finally, they are told by their mother that they must run away.

Jolie frames the action with a political context which places the blame not merely with Pol Pot but with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and their unofficial bombing campaigns against a neutral country. In Cambodia, the US government really did find a way to prove their “domino” theory: the grotesque violence caused pain, anguish, rage and Khmer Rouge popularity in a chain of consequence, factors which toppled against each other like dominoes. Yet the film’s real ferocity is saved for the ideologues of terror.

The woozy visual stillness, with which Loung had originally registered the sheer strangeness of their Maoist new life in the country, is now no longer in evidence. There is just hardship and pain. The film’s final scenes, showing the actual figures themselves as grown adults, gesture at healing, closure and forgiveness. But it is very hard to forget the horror of what has gone before.

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Angelina Jolie's "First They Killed My Father" is far and away her best work as a director: a rare film about a national tragedy told through the eyes and mind of a child, and as fine a war movie as has ever been made. Adapted by Jolie and co-writer Loung Ung from Ung's memoir about her family's experiences after the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, it stands apart from most work in this vein not just because of what it does so well, but because of what it refuses to do.

There are emotionally powerful moments, particularly near the end when you start to see some light at the end of the tunnel, but there's little in the way of canned Hollywood uplift. But every image and feeling are anchored to the point-of-view of Ung, played by the remarkable young actress Sareum Srey Moch . She was five when the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh and seven when she made it out, her young mind stained by memories of hunger, brutality and sudden death. She learned skills that no child should know, like how to plant land mines, fire an AK-47, and drive a spear into a Vietnamese soldier's chest.

The movie kicks off with a prologue alluding to how American carpet bombing of Cambodia during the closing years of the war helped create a power vacuum that vicious people rushed to fill. This is related through documentary and news clips of bombers incinerating forests, U.S. troops understandably expressing little interest in or animosity toward Cambodia, then-President Richard Nixon insisting that there is no American war there, and then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger callously promising a "final solution" in the region. The blend of languages in this section reinforces the idea that this era was a tragedy of international significance, regardless of whether people who were alive at the time paid attention.

Luong's story begins in relative peace, with the heroine and her bourgeois family, headed by a military police officer father ( Phoeung Kompheak ), in the capital, wondering what changes the end of the U.S. war will bring. The Khmer Rouge, a splinter of the Vietnam People's Army of North Vietnam led by future dictator Pol Pot, rolls into the city, crushing the remnants of the country's weak official government and initiating a purge that would claim millions of lives. Loung's father sees the writing on the wall and leads his wife ( Sveng Socheata ) and children from the city. 

From that point on, "First They Killed My Father" becomes a survival story about a suddenly powerless family doing whatever it takes to get through the day. Their efforts are shadowed by the knowledge that not all of them will make it out alive, and that even outwardly unremarkable interactions could lead to the family being separated, imprisoned, brutalized or murdered. The early scenes of Luong's mother, father and siblings divesting themselves of most possessions (including some beloved dresses and toys) are all the more vivid for being underplayed. This dry-eyed reportage continues throughout the film, ratcheting up toward operatic or tragic heights only when Loung is at her most distraught.

It's impossible to properly appreciate the impact of this story without acknowledging the filmmaking's role in summoning it. More so than almost any recent American feature made at this budget level, "First They Killed My Father" creates a distinct visual vocabulary that seems to emerge organically from the story, then pursues it consistently, never breaking away without reason. With the exception of a few aerial or crane shots that provide a sense of geographical context, and some high-angled overhead shots that evoke the eye of an indifferent God, most of the film is captured with a handheld camera that communicates anxiety or dread but never tries to generate phony action-movie "excitement." Shot after shot after shot amounts to a simple record of actions: she walked over there; this person spoke to that person. They're all captured by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle in smartly composed but unfussy images, some in third person (with the heroine in the frame), others in first (the camera representing what Loung sees). The editing, by Xavier Box and Patricia Rommel , reconciles these perspectives in such a supple way that we seem to be outside and inside the story all at once, thinking about it even as we're feeling its impact.

Every now and then, Jolie gives us a flashback or fantasy, often focusing on the heroine's memories of a time when the family were comfortable, healthy and carefree. The color in these shots is oversaturated, aglow with yearning. When the film snaps back into present tense and rejoins Loung and her family in an agrarian work camp/"re-education" facility where the earth, sky and trees seem to have been bled of color, the loss of pigmentation stands in for the loss of hope.

In time, the reason for this meticulous style becomes clear: this is a tale recollected in tranquility from some point in the future, so of course it would switch on a dime between immediacy and detachment. When you remember trauma, you see a dark picture but also the philosophical frame you've built around it. Everything seems to be happening a long time ago but also right now. 

The script mostly avoids the particulars of Cambodian-Vietnamese animosity, presenting re-education sessions filled with anti-Vietnamese invective as examples of wartime conditioning and mind control. The Khmer Rouge's constant praising of the utopian ideals of Communism is undermined by what the heroine sees: the vegetables and rice being taken from the camp workers and sent to the front lines to feed combat soldiers; the meager spoonfuls of broth that the farm slaves stir in their bowls at night; the crude pleasure that low-level flunkies take in humiliating underlings, their sadism empowered by allegiance to the state; the plump beetles that the father roasts over a fire, then serves to his starving family like chestnuts. The script is less interested in what it all meant, geopolitically speaking, than how it felt to live through it: the sense of dislocation and uncertainty, the deprivation and fear, the artillery shells tearing through treelines at night and jolting sleepers awake; the mines blasting bodies into the air and setting them down without legs.

The ace in Jolie's deck here is the knowledge that a girl as young as Loung can't comprehend the larger meaning of what's happening to her, and is therefore unlikely to expend precious emotional energy connecting cause-and-effect dots or lamenting what was lost. It's an almost entirely experiential movie. Whatever occurs automatically becomes the new normal for the heroine, and she does her best to adapt to it, even when she's stricken by grief, panic or rage. Whether Luong is hearing her mother warn her and her sisters that they can't take party dresses on the road, watching a camp worker beat a hungry child for stealing vegetables, or inspiring a group of kids to kill, skin, roast and eat a snake, the film maintains a culturally neutral attitude. It's never, "Oh, how horrible" or "Isn't that strange and different?" but simply "Here's what happened next."

This is not a "triumph of the human spirit" movie with syrupy strings and inspirational speeches. Marco Beltrami's score never appears unless it has something to add to the images. The majority of scenes play out with natural sound: marching boots, helicopters, gunshots, bombs, birds, insects, cheering crowds, whispered conversations, shrill propaganda speeches, river water flowing downstream. There are no awkwardly inserted scenes with U.N. observers, doctors or journalists, devised to justify casting American or English actors in a film that doesn't require their presence.

It's a film that recreates a bleak time and place with a journalistic eye for detail, catching fleeting, at times surreal instances of humanity amid horror—particularly when it catches kids acting like kids, playing in river water, stretching a hand up towards a military helicopter soaring overhead, becoming fixated on the soft clang-clang of a teakettle bouncing against a knee during a walk. There are many moments where somebody who has no practical reason to smile at Loung smiles at her. She smiles back because that's what kids do, even when they know the adult standing over them could kill their sister, mother or father for no reason at all.

The movie channels the hardest parts of some of the toughest great films ever made: the scenes in "Los Olvidados" and " Pixote " of slum kids playing in ruins; the gallows humor of World War II films built around kids, especially " Hope and Glory " and " Empire of the Sun "; the documentary-immediate sections of " Platoon " that showed the tedium and indignity of war: mud, rain, leeches, insomnia.

Jolie and her collaborators move through Loung's story so economically—never lingering on a scene or image longer than is necessary to make a point—that the fear and pain inherent in the material is always counterbalanced by the intellectual excitement of seeing a world re-created in detail, from the ground up. Jolie is certain to be criticized for being a rich white American directing a film about Cambodian genocide, and not without cause, but it's also obvious that she's done everything possible, short of not directing the movie, to remove herself from center stage, put the spotlight on her heroine, and keep it there. The cast is comprised of Cambodian actors whose names mean nothing internationally, and they don't speak English with a vaguely "Asian" accent, but subtitled Khmer. The opening and closing credits are presented simultaneously in Khmer and English; Khmer always comes first.

That this movie even exists is a small miracle. That it seems to have been made without compromise and largely without ego makes it even more rare. 

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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First They Killed My Father (2017)

135 minutes

Phoeung Kompheak as Pa

Sveng Socheata as Ma

Sareum Srey Moch as Loung

• Angelina Jolie

Writer (based on the book "First They Killed My Father" by)

Cinematographer.

• Anthony Dod Mantle
• Patricia Rommel
• Marco Beltrami

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First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers Kindle Edition

“A riveting memoir. . . an important, moving work that those who have suffered cannot afford to forget and those who have been spared cannot afford to ignore.”  —  San Francisco Chronicle

From a childhood survivor of the Cambodian genocide under the regime of Pol Pot, this is a riveting narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit.

One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.

Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.

• Book 1 of 3 A Daughter of Cambodia
• Print length 274 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher HarperCollins e-books
• Publication date October 12, 2010
• File size 4139 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
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Amazon.com review, from publishers weekly, from school library journal, from library journal, from kirkus reviews, from the back cover, about the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., first they killed my father, harpercollins publishers, inc., chapter one.

Phnom Penh city wakes early to take advantage of the cool morning breeze before the sun breaks through the haze and invades the country with sweltering heat. Already at 6 A.M. people in Phnom Penh are rushing and bumping into each other on dusty, narrow side streets. Waiters and waitresses in black-and-white uniforms swing open shop doors as the aroma of noodle soup greets waiting customers. Street vendors push food carts piled with steamed dumplings, smoked beef teriyaki sticks, and roasted peanuts along the sidewalks and begin to set up for another day of business. Children in colorful T-shirts and shorts kick soccer balls on sidewalks with their bare feet, ignoring the grunts and screams of the food cart owners. The wide boulevards sing with the buzz of motorcycle engines, squeaky bicycles, and, for those wealthy enough to afford them, small cars. By midday, as temperatures climb to over a hundred degrees, the streets grow quiet again. People rush home to seek relief from the heat, have lunch, take cold showers, and nap before returning to work at 2 P.M.

My family lives on a third-floor apartment in the middle of Phnom Penh, so I am used to the traffic and the noise. We don't have traffic lights on our streets; instead, policemen stand on raised metal boxes, in the middle of the intersections directing traffic. Yet the city always seems to be one big traffic jam. My favorite way to get around with Ma is the cyclo because the driver can maneuver it in the heaviest traffic. A cyclo resembles a big wheelchair attached to the front of a bicycle. You just take a seat and pay the driver to wheel you around wherever you want to go. Even though we own two cars and a truck, when Ma takes me to the market we often go in a cyclo because we get to our destination faster. Sitting on her lap I bounce and laugh as the driver pedals through the congested city streets.

This morning, I am stuck at a noodle shop a block from our apartment in this big chair. I'd much rather be playing hopscotch with my friends. Big chairs always make me want to jump on them. I hate the way my feet just hang in the air and dangle. Today, Ma has already warned me twice not to climb and stand on the chair. I settle for simply swinging my legs back and forth beneath the table.

Ma and Pa enjoy taking us to a noodle shop in the morning before Pa goes off to work. As usual, the place is filled with people having breakfast. The clang and clatter of spoons against the bottom of bowls, the slurping of hot tea and soup, the smell of garlic, cilantro, ginger, and beef broth in the air make my stomach rumble with hunger. Across from us, a man uses chopsticks to shovel noodles into his mouth. Next to him, a girl dips a piece of chicken into a small saucer of hoisin sauce while her mother cleans her teeth with a toothpick. Noodle soup is a traditional breakfast for Cambodians and Chinese. We usually have this, or for a special treat, French bread with iced coffee.

"Sit still," Ma says as she reaches down to stop my leg midswing, but I end up kicking her hand. Ma gives me a stern look and a swift slap on my leg.

"Don't you ever sit still? You are five years old. You are the most troublesome child. Why can't you be like your sisters? How Will you ever grow up to be a proper young lady?" Ma sighs. Of course I have heard all this before.

It must be hard for her to have a daughter who does not act like a girl, to be so beautiful and have a daughter like me. Among her women friends, Ma is admired for her height, slender build, and porcelain white skin. I often overhear them talking about her beautiful face when they think she cannot hear. Because I'm a child, they feel free to say whatever they want in front of me, believing I cannot understand. So while they're ignoring me, they comment on her perfectly arched eyebrows; almond-shaped eyes; tall, straight Western nose; and oval face. At 5'6", Ma is an amazon among Cambodian women. Ma says she's so tall because she's all Chinese. She says that some day my Chinese side will also make me tall. I hope so, because now when I stand I'm only as tall as Ma's hips.

"Princess Monineath of Cambodia, now she is famous for being proper," Ma continues. "It is said that she walks so quietly that no one ever hears her approaching. She smiles without ever showing her teeth. She talks to men without looking directly in their eyes. What a gracious lady she is." Ma looks at me and shakes her head.

"Hmm..." is my reply, taking a loud swig of Coca-Cola from the small bottle.

Ma says I stomp around like a cow dying of thirst. She's tried many times to teach me the proper way for a young lady to walk. First, you connect your heel to the ground, then roll the ball of your feet on the earth while your toes curl up painfully. Finally you end up with your toes gently pushing you off the ground. All this is supposed to be done gracefully, naturally, and quietly. It all sounds too complicated and painful to me. Besides, I am happy stomping around.

"The kind of trouble she gets into, while just the other day she" Ma continues to Pa. but is interrupted when our waitress arrives with our soup.

"Phnom Penh special noodles with chicken for you and a glass of hot water," says the waitress as she puts the steaming bowl of translucent potato noodles swimming in clear broth before Ma.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0046ZRG0M
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperCollins e-books (October 12, 2010)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 12, 2010
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 4139 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 274 pages
• #5 in History of Cambodia
• #174 in Historical Asian Biographies (Books)
• #178 in Southeast Asia History

About the author

Loung Ung is an author, lecturer, and activist who has devoted her life to advancing human rights and equality in Cambodia and around the world. She is the author of the memoir First They Killed My Father: a Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (HarperCollins 2000), which tells the story of her survival under the Khmer Rouge regime. It was a national bestseller and won the 2001 Asian/Pacific American Librarians’ Association award for “Excellence in Adult Non-fiction Literature”, as well as other awards. It has been translated into many languages and taught in many schools and universities. In 2013, Loung expanded her activism as a writer for Girl Rising, a documentary film about girls’ education around the world. First They Killed My Father was adapted into a Netflix movie in 2017 by director by Angelina Jolie from a screenplay co-written by Angelina Jolie and Loung.

For her work, Loung was chosen by The World Economic Forum as one of the “100 Global Youth Leaders of Tomorrow”. Additionally, Loung has also written two other books, Lucky Child and Lulu in the Sky, both published by HarperCollins, and is currently working on a novel. She is a sought-after speaker who has shared her story and insights with audiences around the world, including at the United Nations Conferences, and various universities and corporations. She has also appeared on numerous media outlets, such as CNN, and NPR.

Loung has visited Cambodia over 40 times since leaving the country. She likes to eat fried crickets and ride her tandem bike with her husband Mark, who is her partner/owner in three restaurants and a microbrewery–Bright Side, Nano Brew and Market Garden Brewery–in Cleveland, Ohio.

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