The Conscience of Nhem En (2008)

• 75%
• 2008
• Documentary
• Steven Okazaki

"The Conscience of Nhem En" is the haunting story of a young soldier who took ID photos of thousands of innocent people before they were exterminated by the Khmer Rouge. The deeper theme is about conscience and complicity, how any one of us answer the question: "What would you do?" Sixteen years old at the time, Nhem En was a photographer at the notorious Tuol Sleng Prison, also know as S-21, where 17,000 people were tortured and killed from 1975 to 1979. The photos he took are an extraordinary document of madness and cruelty. Only eight people are known to have walked out of S-21 alive. Three of them tell their remarkable stories of survival. Bou Meng, 34 years old then, survived because the Khmer Rouge needed an artist to paint portraits of their leader Pol Pot. Chum Mey, 42 at the time, survived because he could fix sewing machines. Chim Math, 20 years old, was with the Khmer Rouge until they discovered her father had been a policeman. She doesn't know why she survived, but she can't forget what happened to her.