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" Film is subjective, and we must be careful with that. The kinds of films I love are those that observe, and I give possibility for people to talk. No need for me to tell people what to think - even when I make a film like 'S-21.' It's only one point of view. It's still a film; it's not a tribunal. "

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" With 'The Missing Picture,' we'd shot for a year and a half already when this idea of the clay figurine, the life that comes from the earth, came to me, and I changed everything. "

Rithy Panh

Year

Picture

Life

" The Khmer Rouge can't destroy me. I still have my imagination and am capable of making films. I am not locked up. "

" Cambodia is not only a country of war, but also a country of culture. It's in our DNA. "

" Evil has always been here since the world began. Good is what is difficult. It is a work of every day. "

" 'The Missing Picture' is about my story and my parents. Before this film, I never said 'I' in a film, so it is very personal. "

" I am lucky to be a film director. I can create, express. It proves that I am still alive and the Khmer Rouge did not succeed in destroying me. "

Rithy Panh

I Can

Lucky

" Part of the Khmer Rouge project was not only to destroy individual people, but to destroy the very notion of the individual. I want to simply rebuild the stories of people - it's part of my fight against the Khmer Rouge agenda. "

" 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. "

" Every time you are getting ready to make a shot in a documentary film, you are asking yourself questions about your cinematographic approach. You are approaching the truth, but the image is never the truth itself. "

" Pain is handed down from one generation to the next. "

Rithy Panh

Pain

Down

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

" We need a peaceful, modern Cambodia. We need to achieve that. It's not easy. "

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

Rithy Panh

Filmmaker

Obvious

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

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

" 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. "

" A country cannot develop without a strong identity. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I never want to be a film director - I want to be a teacher. "

" I like people who have the capacity to forget. I think that to forget is a good thing. Forgetting is good. But sometimes I cannot. For me, I cannot. "

Rithy Panh

Forget

Think

" We need creativity. We need more poetry after Auschwitz. "

Rithy Panh

Poetry

After

" 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. "

Rithy Panh

Transform

Way

" It is only by reflecting on the past that one can create a better future. "

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

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

" I love archival films very much. I spent thousands of hours watching archive footage. Every time I see it, I see something. Sometimes I think I know this footage, but two years later, I see it again, and I see something new. "