Main thing is to stay alive
Director Roshane Saidnattar
Countries
Duration 97 min
Synopsis
Roshane Saidnattar, young film director, survivor of the death camps in Cambodia, has met during several days the theorist leader of the Red Khmer power, Khieu Samphan. Facing either the silence or the out of time speech of the leader, the director and her mother, who also survived the horror of the camps, go back to Cambodia and find the strength to speak. " L’important, c’est de rester vivant" (Main thing is to stay alive) mixes the memories of the director, the testimony of her mother and unreleased archives. Those moving sequences are structured around the exceptional interview of Khieu Samphan. This film, by its intimate echo, reveals a part of the madness that destroyed a whole country and which we may call a genocide.
Roshane Saidnattar, young film director, survivor of the death camps in Cambodia, has met during several days the theorist leader of the Red Khmer power, Khieu Samphan. Facing either the silence or the out of time speech of the leader, the director and her mother, who also survived the horror of the camps, go back to Cambodia and find the strength to speak. " L’important, c’est de rester vivant" (Main thing is to stay alive) mixes the memories of the director, the testimony of her mother and unreleased archives. Those moving sequences are structured around the exceptional interview of Khieu Samphan. This film, by its intimate echo, reveals a part of the madness that destroyed a whole country and which we may call a genocide.