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IMDbPro

The Missing Picture

Original title: L'image manquante
  • 20132013
  • Not RatedNot Rated
  • 1h 32m
IMDb RATING
7.3/10
3.3K
YOUR RATING
The Missing Picture (2013)
Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia's Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979.
Play trailer1:56
2 Videos
17 Photos
  • Documentary
Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia's Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979.Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia's Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979.Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia's Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979.
IMDb RATING
7.3/10
3.3K
YOUR RATING
  • Director
    • Rithy Panh
  • Writers
    • Rithy Panh
    • Christophe Bataille(commentary)
  • Stars
    • Randal Douc(voice)
    • Jean-Baptiste Phou(English version)
Top credits
  • Director
    • Rithy Panh
  • Writers
    • Rithy Panh
    • Christophe Bataille(commentary)
  • Stars
    • Randal Douc(voice)
    • Jean-Baptiste Phou(English version)
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 15User reviews
    • 96Critic reviews
    • 87Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 1 Oscar
      • 12 wins & 16 nominations total

    Videos2

    Theatrical Trailer
    Trailer 1:56
    Theatrical Trailer
    The Missing Picture
    Trailer 1:37
    The Missing Picture

    Photos17

    The Missing Picture (2013)
    The Missing Picture (2013)
    The Missing Picture (2013)
    The Missing Picture (2013)
    The Missing Picture (2013)
    The Missing Picture (2013)
    The Missing Picture (2013)
    The Missing Picture (2013)
    The Missing Picture (2013)
    The Missing Picture (2013)
    Rithy Panh in The Missing Picture (2013)
    The Missing Picture (2013)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Randal Douc
    • Narratoras Narrator
    • (voice)
    Jean-Baptiste Phou
    • Narratoras Narrator
    • (English version)
    • (voice)
    • Director
      • Rithy Panh
    • Writers
      • Rithy Panh
      • Christophe Bataille(commentary)
    • All cast & crew
    • See more cast details at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Official submission of Cambodia to the Oscars 2014 best foreign language film category.
    • Quotes

      [It's not a picture of loved ones i seek, i want to touch them, their voices are missing, so i wont tell. I want to leave it all, leave my language, my country in vain and my childhood returns. Now it's the boy who seeks me out, i see him, he wants to speak to me but words are hard to find]

    • Connections
      Featured in The Oscars (2014)
    • Soundtracks
      We Were Staring at the Sky
      Composed by Marc Marder

      Co-Edition JBA Production/Boosey and Hawkes Music Publ LTD

      © JBA Production

    User reviews15

    Review
    Top review
    8/10
    Unique portrayal of a human holocaust
    History, it is said, is written by the victors. But sometimes, it is the victims - or more accurately, the survivors - who get to do the writing. That is the case with Rithy Panh, a Cambodian who survived the horrors of life under the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Panh was a mere child when he suffered the loss of his parents and siblings in the various grueling work camps to which they had been consigned. As an adult, Panh went on to become a documentary filmmaker dedicated to telling his story to the world. It was a purge aimed mainly at the intelligentsia of Cambodian society - the well-off and educated - who posed the greatest threat to the regime's vision of a collectivist agrarian utopia.

    Where, Panh asks, are all the pictures of children starving, of people being worked into the grave that more accurately portray the reality of this 20th Century holocaust? Somehow, those were not recorded and preserved for posterity. Instead, we get a series of grainy propaganda images - of workers seemingly happy in their toil, of leaders of the revolution inspiring the masses with their promises of a Communist paradise - that were officially sanctioned by the government. So Panh has taken it upon himself to provide the "missing" pictures the Pol Pot regime failed to provide to the world.

    The Oscar-nominated documentary "The Missing Picture" is a stark, haunting illustration of what life was like under Pol Pot's brutal dictatorship. The director alternates between grainy, mostly black-and- white footage taken at the time and diorama-style re-creations using strategically arranged and intricately carved clay figurines. These frozen, expressionless figures, with their searching, unblinking eyes, lift the suffering that the actual people endured to a near-surreal level, while the wistful, soft-spoken narration by Jean-Baptiste Phou echoes the human tragedy at the core. Indeed, the approach Panh has taken manages to personalize a holocaust that, given its enormous breadth and scope - an estimated one to three million people died under the regime - would otherwise be incomprehensible to the human mind. "The Missing Picture," by "going small," paradoxically helps us to see the tragedy writ large.
    helpful•3
    3
    • Buddy-51
    • Aug 19, 2014

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • March 19, 2014 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • Cambodia
      • France
    • Official sites
      • Official Facebook
      • Official site (Japan)
    • Language
      • French
    • Also known as
      • 遺失的映像
    • Filming locations
      • Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
    • Production companies
      • Catherine Dussart Productions (CDP)
      • ARTE
      • Bophana Production
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $52,164
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $10,148
      • Mar 23, 2014
    • Gross worldwide
      • $78,097
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 32 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.78 : 1 / (high definition)

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