''The Conscience of Nhem En'' is a 26-minute

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

directed by

Steven Okazaki Steven Okazaki (born March 12, 1952) is an American documentary filmmaker known for his raw, cinéma vérité-style documentaries that frequently show ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances. He has received a Peabody Award, a Pr ...

, telling the stories of three survivors of the

Tuol Sleng Prison The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (), or simply Tuol Sleng (, ; lit. "Hill of the Poisonous Trees" or "Strychnine Hill"), is a museum chronicling the Cambodian genocide. Located in Phnom Penh, the site is a former secondary school which was used as ...

. Also known as S-21, Tuol Sleng was where 17,000 Cambodians were imprisoned and killed in the late 1970s. The film follows a young soldier responsible for taking the ID photos of thousands of people before they were tortured and murdered by the

Khmer Rouge The Khmer Rouge is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), and by extension to Democratic Kampuchea, which ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name was coined in the 1960s by Norodom Sihano ...

. The documentary was nominated for an

Oscar Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to: People and fictional and mythical characters * Oscar (given name), including lists of people and fictional characters named Oscar, Óscar or Oskar * Oscar (footballer, born 1954), Brazilian footballer ...

for Best Documentary Short.

Overview

Nhem En was 16 years old when he was the staff photographer at the Tuol Sleng Prison, also known as Security-21, where from 1975 to 1979 approximately 17,000 people were registered and photographed, then imprisoned and tortured before being killed. Only seven people are documented to have walked out of S-21 alive. Three of them tell their stories in the film. Bou Meng, 34 years old at the time, survived because the prison needed an artist to paint portraits of Khmer Rouge leader

Pol Pot Pol Pot (born Saloth Sâr; 19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian politician, revolutionary, and dictator who ruled the communist state of Democratic Kampuchea from 1976 until Cambodian–Vietnamese War, his overthrow in 1979. During ...

. Chum Mey, 42 at the time, survived because he could fix sewing machines. Chim Math, 20 at the time, does not know why she survived.

References

External links

Official site
on Farallon Films * *
Original Photographs from Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison by Nhem En
2008 films American short documentary films Films about Cambodian Americans Documentary films about the Cambodian genocide Films directed by Steven Okazaki 2008 short documentary films 2000s English-language films 2000s American films English-language short documentary films {{hist-documentary-film-stub