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" Clay is a very interesting and fundamental material: it's earth, it's water, and - with fire - it takes on form and life. "

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" Art is giving to what you create a soul. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Art is freedom. If you defend art, you defend freedom. "

" When I make a film, I don't watch a lot of other films. I read a lot; I try to read poems, things that can liberate my human condition, that make me go away... I spend a lot of the time doing nothing, just concentrating on the subject. Sometimes I'll sit in my chair for two or three hours without doing anything. "

" In all of my films, there is a desire to testify, to interrogate the past. "

" Cannes or Oscars is not only to bring happiness and recognition - they protect people like me. The world knows who you are. You can work. You can express. You can help other people. It's not only the star system. It's a symbol of freedom. "

" 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. "

" I'm not someone who has to make a film at any cost. I have to find the right way to make it or not at all. "

" We must be capable of writing our own history. "

" I wasn't predestined to be a filmmaker; this wasn't an obvious choice to me. "

" Totalitarians always want to kill culture. But imagine life without football, Faulkner, or Bob Dylan. It's not life. "

" I left Cambodia when I was 12 or 13. I didn't really escape, but I needed to go away. "

" 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. "

" When the Khmer Rouge reached Phnom Penh, the first thing they did was to evacuate the population. Then they took over. The point of a revolution is to bring justice to the people, so even if you don't have proof of sabotage, you manufacture it. "

" What I like to do with every film is to bring a form, like a cinematographic proposal. If you watch 'S21,' it's a form; 'Duch, Master of the Gates of Hell' is a different proposal. "

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

" Evil has always been there; it's always a part of us. Evil is no big surprise. But what about the people who gave freely, who stood up for human dignity? Even in the most extreme and terrible situations, these acts of dignity existed. And for me, that is the banality of good. "

" I have never been political in a partisan sense. "

" When you screen a film like 'The Missing Picture,' it is not like watching TV. Watching TV is very solitary. When you watch cinema, you watch it together, and you talk about it after the screening. "

" It's better to live a world where you can hear different languages and sensibilities. "

" 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. "

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

" I didn't survive because I was stronger than others. I survived because my family and friends helped me to survive. They took my place. My job is to give them back their dignity, tell their story, and say their names. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I have only one life, and I can't do all. If I do one thing well, I'm happy. "