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Film Festival and international Forum on Human Rights Venue

Geneva, Switzerland - This past weekend marked the opening of the eighth edition of the Film Festival and International Forum for Human Rights in Geneva which serves as a platform between human-rights activists and filmmakers.

One of the first documentaries screened was Roshane Saidnattar‘s “L’important c’est de rester vivant,” or “The Important Part is to Stay Alive,” a haunting personal account of life under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Saidnattar, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge death camps, takes viewers with her as she revisits the nightmare that unfolded in Cambodia thirty years ago, via interviews with the former President of the Central Presidium, Khieu Sâmphan.

In a search for her own sense of justice regarding the inhumanity of the former regime, Saidnattar tracks down and interviews Sâmphan on his role as President of Democratic Kampuchea.

Sâmphan’s testimony is as disturbing in the willful naivete displayed, as any of Saidnattar’s voice overs depicting daily survival under the Khmer Rouge.

“Je ne suis pas differente aux autres intellectuelles,” the ex-president tells the camera in the opening shots. Saidnattar’s strength as a director – and a survivor – though lies in the unspoken.

Eighth Edition Human Rights Film Festival poster

While she does at points refute the utter lack of accountability in Sâmphan’s recollections, the director lets the unspeakable speak for itself.

When she asks if he “would fight alongside the Khmer Rouge today,” the ex-president responds: “you can’t remake history.” He said he led the regime in “good faith.”

In one of the most emotional scenes in the film, the director, along with her daughter and granddaughter, visits the site of the work camp where she labored under near death conditions to construct a bridge.

Clips of her recounting forced starvation and her separation from her then five-year-old daughter, are interspersed with shots of Sâmphan describing the satisfaction he felt at seeing the bridge constructed.

In contrast to this historical amnesia, Saidnattar beautifully captures the collective and frank mourning of a country coming to terms with its past. “I don’t want to bother you about my husband’s death,” a fellow survivor from the work camp tells the protagonist, but it was because of your sister that he was killed.”

The woman then recounts how in trying to save Saidnattar’s orphaned niece, her husband was himself executed. In spite of her words, there is no acrimony in the statement; it is understood that loss has been universal.

“L’importance,” will be screened again on Wednesday 10 March at 18:30 at the Grutli Arts House in Plainpalais, Geneva.

Check out this and other films screening throughout the week on the Festival’s web site.

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