S21, The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine

Tuol Svay Pray high school in Phnom Penh, requisitioned in 1975 by Pol Pot’s security forces, became S-21, the country’s biggest detention and torture centre in operation until 1979. Rithy Panh had planned to film on the spot. First Nath, one of the three sole S-21 survivors now turned painter, then the executioners. He had not planned any confrontation between them, but Nath returns to the place to paint the day the Panh is filming the former S-21 torturers. Nath, who had been blindfolded and tortured, demands to speak to them and compare his sightless memories with their testimonies. His turn has come to interrogate the men who had forced lies out of their victims under torture. JB