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S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine(S-21, la machine de mort Khmère rouge)

✭ ✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Cambodia, France · 2003
1h 41m
Director Rithy Panh
Starring Chum Mey, Khieu 'Poev' Ches, Yeay Cheu, Nhiem Ein
Genre Documentary

Between 1975 and 1970, the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia forced famine, hard labor, and violence upon its population in its quest for an agrarian utopia. 30 years later, survivors and ex-Khmer Rouge guards are interviewed in the S21 torture prison, now a Genocide museum, to discover how these atrocities could have happened.

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What are critics saying?

60

Chicago Reader by

The efforts of victims and victimizers to come to terms with historical trauma are admirable, but the film is too tough-minded to espouse a facile discourse of "healing" in the face of genocide driven by ideology run amok.

80

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

Mr. Rithy Panh makes telling use of a survivor whose ability to communicate lends itself to the subject. The tragedy is that Mr. Vann Nath's powers are used to illuminate these horrors.

50

Variety by Derek Elley

There's no shortage of existing docus on the subject, and Panh's doesn't bring either a fresh enough angle or enough new material to the table to justify its length.

80

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

S21 is understated and unforgettable; in its modest way, this movie is as horrific an exposure to evil as Lanzmann's "Shoah."

70

The A.V. Club by Nathan Rabin

A harrowing, unblinking look at the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal regime that by some accounts killed off more than a quarter of Cambodia's population between 1975 and 1979.

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