The Missing Picture

Important subject and very personal. Shame the movie feels like a very long stay at a boring museum.

Interestingly made, as much a memoir as a documentary. Beautiful to look at but the narration was a little frustrating to me at times.

To recreate a terrible era of history of which there is little surviving evidence is a big ask, but Panh does a decent and memorable job of it with his meticulous scenes of sculpted clay figures and personal narration. The film does feel quite long and structureless, and tends to drift in the void between informative, hard-hitting, personal and spiritual, without hitting a definite mark. Still, a must-see for Cambodiophiles.

many historical atrocities can only be accessed directly through footage created/approved by the perpetrators. there tends to be a palpable absence, and panh aims to fill that absence and unpack his trauma by reconstructing oft-unpleasant recollections using clay abstractions. artistically representing the truth - particularly of a subjectively remembered past - is a slippery endeavor however, and panh's reflective, wistful film is constantly reevaluating its own value and limitations.

Star Rating: ★★★★

33. İstanbul Film Festivali - Atlas Sineması: ...

Having loved Panh's more straightforward documentary about the S21, it took me a little while to adjust to this, a personal testimony of the Khmer Rouge told with the aid of wood-carvings. By the end, I was in awe.

I most appreciate the way this film organically understands memory in terms of art-making (or is it the other way around?). Panh's sculpting of his memories from clay offers a poignant and deeply personal portrayal of the events surrounding the Khmer Rouge. That Panh remains off camera offers a sense of appropriate disconnect from the events, reminding us that though Panh has opened a window to these events, we are still removed from them in profound ways.