April 17, 1975. A phone call informs a young couple that the Khmer Rouge, a communist guerrilla movement, have just entered Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. They are led by Pol Pot, who sees his countrymen and women much as Hitler saw the Jews.
People are given 72 hours to leave the city in a massed force exodus to the countryside. There is a problem: the woman has just gone into labor. And her husband has at least two strikes against him––he wears glasses and is a doctor.
Child of the Rouge is a powerful story of birthing a baby into a genocidal world that killed one in every four Cambodians between 1975 and 1979. Pol Pot and his henchmen were driven by a radical, utopian ideology.
Former officials, teachers, students, doctors, lawyers and other professionals led the lists of those killed. Wearing glasses was one way intellectuals and other enemies were identified.
Pol Pot and his henchmen ordered the entire populations of cities and towns to march into the countryside. Along the way there was almost no provision for food, water, medicine, or shelter. They were given primitive hoes, shovels and baskets and forced to labor from dawn to dusk, many digging their own graves.
The Cambodian genocide was graphically portrayed in the 1984 Academy Award-winning film The Killing Fields. One survivor, Haing Ngor, played Dith Pran in the film. The killing fields was a network of sites where the Khmer Rouge carried out mass executions and buried victims from 1975 to 1979. Up to 2 million Cambodians were massacred.
The pregnant woman and her husband make their way to a deserted building––apparently an abandoned hospital. Their baby girl has a problem requiring a c-section. As the father locates his instruments they hear voices of two guerrillas coming toward them.
Child of the Rouge is a short, gripping drama inspired by true events. It was written and directed by Taz F. Stark and co-written/starring Pisay Pao. It has premiered at a number of film festivals, including Tribeca.
