First They Killed My Father (2017)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

The acting in this movie is really good.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I absolutely loved this movie. The view of a 7 year old girl on her situation made me very emotional. From being a smal naive girl, not being aware of the hostile situation she is in, to a girl who has unfortunately gained understanding on what is actually going on. Even though she is dealing with emotional/dramatic/violent encounters, she still remains a little girl. Yet less naive. The perspective of the girl impressed me.

The Cambodian genocide as told through the eyes and ears of a child, the subject matter of this film is heartbreaking. As chilling and horrifying as any horror the Holocaust contained, the Khmer Rouge regime in during the 70s in Cambodia was one of the worst crimes against humanity history has ever witness and this film pulls no punches to soften the weight of the horror. First we are treated to the panicky motions of evacuation as Loung Ung's family is forced to relocate to the countryside from their comfortable city home. Loung does not know at this point what awaits her or her family but the audience does and it create a tense atmosphere of fear. You know the killing must begin soon, you are dreading it and the film uses that tension to keep you engaged with the slow march to the work camps that will begin the long nightmare. And yet even as we walk inevitably towards the tragedy, Jolie shows us beauty to. Here a shot of a flower wonderfully alive and fresh, here is a shot of Pa Ung's face as he comforts his tired daughter lit lovingly by sunlight, children play with beetles and laugh. We are reminded that this land is a beautiful land, and it makes it all the more painful to know all this will be taken from Loung and from us soon.Then we reach the work camp. Here is only despair. The Ung family and those forced to work here are made to dye their clothes in order to reduce everyone to a state of sameness that does nothing to improve anyone's circumstances in contrary to what the Khmer Rouge promises. Here we are shown how a man might be punished for giving life saving medicine to his dying child and Loung's sister is beaten for eating a single bean. In a heartrending scene, the family is forced to make a meal out of two locust and Loung having been given a whole bug, breaks off a leg for her starving sister. Later we are shown Loung stealing food after dreaming she is at a almost magical banquet(reminiscence to my eyes as the tempting but ultimately dangerous feast laid out for Ofelia in Pan's Labyrinth during the Pale Man's test which Ofelia like Loung fails to resist). Here death comes for the Ung family, with starvation and sickness to blame as Loung's siblings are reassigned to other camps. Later it is revealed Loung's sister is dying. We travel with Loung into the hut where the dead are laid and the dying are shuttled aside because the labor camp does not distinguish between the two. Jolie and Loung still manage to make these scenes visually amazing and the story about what happens when a person dies is a dark and tragic kind of lovely.In this place of sorrow, the title finally makes sense. Pa Ung is ordered to repair a bridge. There is no bridge, these men have come to kill him. Knowing he will never see his family again there is a painful goodbye. Does watching him walk away break your heart? It should. He does not even risk a look back. It should break your heart to pieces. Loung dreams of his death and his burial in a mass grave. Not even the wonderful camera work and lightning and editing can make this palatable and it does not try. It speaks of being haunted with the blue mist and shadows playing. With her father gone, Loung's journey and the film's tone just becomes more dark and more brutal. Ma Ung desperately sends her remaining eldest children away with family pictures and messages of love in the hopes they can use false names and be protected. They are instead recruited as child soldiers and forced to participate in military training. They get fed better than those in the labor camp but most of what they are made to swallow is propaganda. The first time Loung fires a gun she flashes back to hearing a gunshot while on the road with her family close to the beginning of the movie and the realization for those who did not understand what happened is pretty horrifying. She later tries to find her mother and younger sister who were left behind but they are dead. It just gets worse from there. I don't think I have to touch how horrible the battle scenes are. And the minefield scene is the stuff of nightmares, made all the worse by remembering this was real.Finally the physical ordeal is over. The Red Cross comes in to collect the remaining survivors and we leave Loung and her remaining family in prayer. It's not a happy ending, it just is.Throughout the movie Loung is shown fantasizing or dreaming but the dreams are not always nice. This speaks to the emotional distance victims of terrors like the Cambodian genocide must put between themselves and their trauma to just survive. It's also a way to allow the audience into the mindset of a child in the midst of a warzone. I really appreciated how this film could tell a story with very little dialogue in some of its scenes and Jolie really knew how to make the most of her shots, they really are breathtaking at times. The writing was almost as if it was telling the grimmest and darkest fairytale of all, so if you are looking for a film that contains lots of quippy facts or a historical viewing of the Khmer Rouge it cannot really help you. It is a deeply personal story, Loung Ung may be sharing it with us but this is her pain and devastation we are seeing. I think a lot of her for sharing it, even knowing so much of the audience would never be able to understand. The film also points its finger at the American military for some of the responsibility and I cannot say that they are wholly wrong to do so. I am also positive there are Buddhist symbolisms and references to Cambodia's cultural heritage I am missing, for that I am saddened because I should like to understand this film more entirely.The bottom line of this review is that this film surprised me in the way the story was told. It is horrible but it is told in a way that you must see the beauty the horror is trying to erase. In some ways, it is a victory in the face of genocide. A tale of survival in the face of genocide, a tearful goodbye to family that has been forever lose, and the tentative hope that this does not have to be the future. I should hope this moves people to resolve that no child will have to go through what Loung went through ever again.

We had a plumber come by, and he was a very talkative fellow. He kept asking us if we had any questions about plumbing. When he was all done, we just chit-chatted for about an hour. His parents are from Cambodia, and we asked him a lot about Cambodian culture, and he mentioned this movie. It was on Netflix so I watched it.This movie is a dramatization about one little girl's experience during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It shows her experiences through her eyes. Almost all the dialogue is in the Khmer language with English subtitles. I hate subtitles because you miss what's going on when you're reading, but in this case they used the language to make it authentic.I hate to say this, but the dramatization is rather lame. It's watered down. The events portrayed in the movie do not even come close to showing how horrific this little girl's experience was. The movie is based on a book which is very well written. If you like the movie, then you should get the book. It's much more intense.It's an important movie. It's important that movies like this and "Schindler's List" and "Birth of a Nation" get made from time to time to remind us and to show the next generations how horrific these events are hopefully so the world will work together to stop events like these before they happen.

'FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER': Four Stars (Out of Five)A historical biopic, about a 7-year-old's account of the Khmer Rouge regime invading Cambodia, in the 70s, and how it affected her and her family. The film was directed by Angelina Jolie, and it's based on the memoir of Loung Ung. It was scripted by Jolie and Ung, and Jolie also served as a producer of the movie. It was also filmed all using Cambodian actors, and in the Khmer language of Cambodia. The film was released by Netflix through their streaming site, and it's gotten mostly positive reviews from critics. It's also been nominated for multiple prestigious awards as well (and won some), and it's been selected as the Cambodian entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the upcoming Academy Awards. I found it to be a well made, and powerful movie. The story is set during the Vietnam war, when the US regularly bombed the neutral country of Cambodia. Many Cambodians began looking to the Khmer Rouge for help. After the US leaves, evacuating the embassy, the Khmer Rouge ruthlessly begins taking control of the area. 7-year-old Loung (Sreymoch Sareum), and her family, are then caught and forced to work in a horrific work camp. The movie is told all from the young girl's perspective. The film is beautifully shot, and acted, and it really leaves a very believable account of what it must have been like during that time and place. Jolie is definitely a talented filmmaker, and she does a good job of picking her subject matter well. The concept of showing a war from a 7-year-old's perspective is a great idea for a film as well. It's definitely a memorable movie, and I learned a lot about that time and place, in history, too.