Daily Times

SIEM REAP: On Saturday, at the ancient Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia, Angelina Jolie will show her new film on the horrors of the Khmer Rouge era, a country the star shares a deep affinity with through her adopted son Maddox.

She said in an interview that it was Maddox, 15, who urged her to make the film. “He was the one who just called it and said he was ready and that he wanted to work on it, which he did. He read the script, helped with notes, and was in the production meetings,” she added.

In its quest for an agrarian Marxist utopia, the regime killed up to two million Cambodians between 1975-1979 through execution, starvation, and overwork.

“The movie reflects the brutality of the Khmer Rouge regime,” Sin Chanchhaya, director of Cambodia’s Cinema and Cultural Diffusion Department, told media.

“This is a big deal for us. There is a strong interest among the Cambodian people (for the film),” he added.

It is the second movie Jolie has made tackling the subject of genocide — in 2011 she made a film about the Bosnian conflict featuring entirely local actors.