Rithy Panh

“We must be capable of writing our own history.”

“I left Cambodia when I was 12 or 13. I didn't really escape, but I needed to go away.”

“I like people who have the capacity to forget. I think that to forget is a good thing. Forgetting is good. But sometimes I cannot. For me, I cannot.”

“I think that, as a filmmaker, you're always making the same film, regardless of how many different stories you tell. This is the case for me, whether I'm making documentaries or fiction films.”

“I have only one life, and I can't do all. If I do one thing well, I'm happy.”

“Part of the Khmer Rouge project was not only to destroy individual people, but to destroy the very notion of the individual. I want to simply rebuild the stories of people - it's part of my fight against the Khmer Rouge agenda.”

“Clay is a very interesting and fundamental material: it's earth, it's water, and - with fire - it takes on form and life.”

“Cannes or Oscars is not only to bring happiness and recognition - they protect people like me. The world knows who you are. You can work. You can express. You can help other people. It's not only the star system. It's a symbol of freedom.”

“Art is giving to what you create a soul.”

“We need creativity. We need more poetry after Auschwitz.”

“Sometimes if you can tell one personal story with a lot of sincerity, it can become a universal story.”

“The most beautiful thing in Cambodia isn't the country - it's the Cambodian people.”

“To me, form is not something that you can plan beforehand, especially for a documentary. You can't write it or sketch it. It requires a confrontation with reality, with history, with ethics and morals. After identifying good content, you have to find the right form to express that content.”

“I love when you get the feeling of some social reality with a fictional film.”

“I'm not someone who has to make a film at any cost. I have to find the right way to make it or not at all.”

“With 'The Missing Picture,' we'd shot for a year and a half already when this idea of the clay figurine, the life that comes from the earth, came to me, and I changed everything.”

“When I make a film, I don't watch a lot of other films. I read a lot; I try to read poems, things that can liberate my human condition, that make me go away... I spend a lot of the time doing nothing, just concentrating on the subject. Sometimes I'll sit in my chair for two or three hours without doing anything.”