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The Missing Picture Movie Review

The Missing Picture is a 2013 Cambodian documentary film directed by Rithy Panh. It is a movie that requires patience and beforehand knowledge on the subject matter, but otherwise it’s quite moving.

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“I seek my childhood like a lost picture“

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Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979. The Khmer Rouge is a totalitarian and repressive regime that ruled the entirety of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, and just in that short period of time they committed so many atrocities, the biggest ones being murdering hundreds of their opponents and committing a genocide on the ethnic minorities of the country, resulting in almost two million deaths.

You need to know at least this basic history of the country before watching this film as it will really help you out to understand it and appreciate it more. The movie definitely is an acquired taste, and I am not just talking about its dark, difficult and demanding subject matter. I am also talking about its approach to storytelling, which is quite frankly odd, but definitely very authentic.

Yes, this movie actually utilizes clay figurines in order to tell its story, and I found the result to be not engaging to watch per say, but fascinating and emotionally resonant given that it fits the theme of erased history from this period of the country. We will never see any real footage from this era given that all of it was destroyed, thus the result is a poignant, melancholic, deeply moving look into the country’s devastating past through these figurines.

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Now, The Missing Picture is clearly biased in its depiction of Cambodia through rose-colored glasses before this terrible regime, but it’s still Rithy Panh’s movie, and that love and nostalgia for his country’s past was quite touching. The narration is excellent and not as overbearing as you’d think it would be given that it’s presented to us throughout the entire film’s runtime. The movie is so well shot and directed while it’s very sophisticated and tragic in some of its monologues.