Archive for The Missing Picture

The Missing Picture nominated for the Oscars!

Posted in Books, pictures with tags , , , , on January 20, 2014 by xi'an

The Missing Picture (L’image manquante), a documentary movie by Rithy Panh whose text is read by my friend, co-author and former student Randal Douc, has just been nominated for the Oscars. (After winning a prize in Cannes.) As a foreign-language movie. This film is actually much much more than a documentary on the Red Khmer terror. The text is just gripping and the idea of depicting the horror of the camps by little clay figures made and painted in the movie gives them a strength and a life other representations would miss. The painstaking application of the sculptor into making those figures endows them with a soul that make their suffering the more real. The Missing Picture goes beyond the political and the ideological to translate the simple but absolute multiplication of lost destinies. Whether or not it stands a chance for the Oscars, a truly unique movie.