Enemies of the people, UK-KH 2009 colour 93 min.
dir:  Rob Lemkin, Thet Sambath
pro: Rob Lemkin, Thet Sambath, Old Street Films, Thet Sambath Production
sc: Rob Lemkin, Thet Sambath
ph: Rob Lemkin, Thet Sambath
mus: Daniel Pemberton
ed: Stefan Ronowicz
dis: Old Street Films

The Khmer Rouge ran what is regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most brutal regimes. Yet the Killing Fields of Cambodia remain unexplained. Until now.

In “Enemies of the People” the men and women who perpetrated the massacres – from the foot-soldiers who slit throats to the party’s ideological leader, Nuon Chea aka Brother Number Two – break a 30-year silence to give testimony never before heard or seen.

Unprecedented access from top to bottom of the Khmer Rouge has been achieved through a decade of work by one of Cambodia’s best investigative journalists, Thet Sambath.

Sambath is on a personal quest: he lost his own family in the Killing Fields. The film is his journey to discover not how but why they died. In doing so, he hears and understands for the first time the real story of his country’s tragedy.

After years of visits and trust-building, Sambath finally persuades Brother Number Two to admit (again, for the first time) in detail how he and Pol Pot (the two supreme powers in the Khmer Rouge state) decided to kill party members whom they considered ‘Enemies of the People’.

2010 Krakow Film Festival 2010 –  Silver Horn for Special Artistic Merit for Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath (over 60′ Category)
Sundance Film Festival – Special Jury Prize (World Cinema Documentary)
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival – Grand Jury Award
Human Rights Watch Film Festival – Nestor Almendros Award