Cambodian PM backs Angelina Jolie's Khmer Rouge film

Yahoo – AFP, 17 Sep 2015

US actress Angelina Jolie (R) shakes hands with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun
 Sen during a meeting at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh on September 17, 2015
(AFP Photo/Tang Chhin Sothy)

Cambodian premier Hun Sen on Thursday voiced his support for Hollywood star Angelina Jolie's upcoming film about the murderous Khmer Rouge regime after the pair met in Phnom Penh.

The actress-turned-director is adapting "First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers", a memoir by Cambodian rights activist Loung Ung about surviving the communist regime.

In its quest for an agrarian Marxist utopia, the brutal Khmer Rouge killed up to two million Cambodians between 1975-1979 by starvation, overwork or outright execution.

Hun Sen said the film "reflects facts in Cambodia and will be a way for younger generations to understand the country", the prime minister's spokesman Eang Sophalleth told reporters after the meeting.

Jolie has previously said the film helped her draw closer to the people of Cambodia, the homeland of Maddox, her adopted son with megastar husband Brad Pitt.

She will direct and produce the film for streaming giant Netflix from a script she co-wrote with Ung, while acclaimed Cambodian director Rithy Panh will also serve as a producer.

After two top regime leaders were last year sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, Hun Sen -- a former mid-ranking Khmer Rouge cadre before he defected -- spoke out against further prosecutions, warning it risked reigniting conflict.

Former "Brother Number Two" in the Khmer Rouge Nuon Chea, 89, and ex-head of state Khieu Samphan, 84, are appealing their landmark 2014 convictions by Cambodia's UN-backed court.

They are also undergoing a second trial for genocide, centred on the killing of ethnic Vietnamese and Muslim minorities, forced marriage and rape.

"Brother Number One" Pol Pot died in 1998 without ever facing justice.

In March the tribunal charged three more former Khmer Rouge members with crimes against humanity, ignoring the warnings by Hun Sen.