Enemies of the People Doc: Inside the Khmer Rouge

The documentary film “‘Enemies of the People, ” which has been making the rounds of the film festival circuit, presents an inside look at the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields through the words of Cambodian men and women who perpetrated the 1975-79 holocaust on their own people in which more than two million people died.

The interviewees include one of the highest ranking Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea, known as “Brother Number Two.” Brother Number one was the infamous Pol Pot, who died in 1998.

Filmmaker Thet Sambath, a Cambodian journalist whose family perished during the Killing Fields, spent ten years putting the film together, including securing the first-ever on camera interview with Nuon Chea. Brother Number Two, incidentally, will be put on trial next year by the United Nations and the Cambodian government, along with other senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge.

“Some may say no good can come from talking to killers and dwelling on past horror, but I say these people have sacrificed a lot to tell the truth, ” Sambeth notes on the film’s web site . “In daring to confess, they have done good, perhaps the only good thing left. They and all the killers like them must be part of the process of reconciliation if my country is to move forward.”

The film, which has received several awards and high critical acclaim, is scheduled to into wider theater distribution in October.