Welcome to Angkar

April the 17th 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia. They emptied the city within 2 days and turned the country into a forced labour camp. Our documentary film starts precisely that day.

As for the whole population, Thell and her relatives are “invited” to take belongings “for 3 days only”. Very quickly, they realize the scope of the political project that is taking place under their powerless eyes. No, they will not be leaving “for 3 days only”.

But for how long? To go where? And to do what? In order to justify the unjustifiable, the Khmer Rouge repeat tirelessly as a leitmotiv: “Walk strait forward, Angkor will welcome you”. So road after road, village after village, Thell and her relatives started to forge their single goal: survive this horror.

Through the lives and dignity of a family, this documentary film mentions four years of starvation, illness, forced labour, during which this people cut off from the rest of the world has turned on itself.

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