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

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" 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 most beautiful thing in Cambodia isn't the country - it's the Cambodian people. "

" 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. "

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

" I love when you get the feeling of some social reality with a fictional film. "

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

" 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. "

" A country cannot develop without a strong identity. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" For the young generation, when they see that there is a film director from Cambodia to go on to be nominated, for them, a lot can change. I don't know another way to restore our identity if it's not art. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Of course, when you're making a documentary, you don't have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room. "

" '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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" People of my generation did not like very much to tell what we lived through during the Khmer Rouge regime. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "