‘The Killing Fields’ at 40

Director Roland Joffé chronicled Cambodia’s descent under the Khmer Rouge while telling a deeply personal story of perseverance and hope.

The Killing Fields was released in November 1984. The film received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. It won three: Best Supporting Actor (Haing S. Ngor), Best Cinematography and Best Editing. (Image credit: Columbia-EMI-Warner Distributors, Goldcrest Films).

Of the many legacies of the Vietnam War, the saga of Cambodia is one of the most heartbreaking. The war next door in Vietnam provided impetus for a homegrown Marxist movement, the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot, to wage a guerilla war against the Cambodian government of Lon Nol, an American ally from 1970 until his fall in 1975.

The drama unfolding in the spring of 1975 in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, provides the backdrop for director Roland Joffé’s The Killing Fields. Nearly two-and-a-half hours long, the film primarily follows the real life experiences of two journalists covering the civil war: Cambodian Dith Pran (played by Haing S. Ngor) and American Sydney Schanberg, played by 43-year-old actor Sam Waterston.

Geographically, Cambodia is about the same size as the state of Oklahoma. (Image: WikiMedia, Addicted04).

The history: Sydney Schanberg was a New York Times journalist covering the upheaval in Cambodia and Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War era. Dith Pran was his colleague and interpreter. The two men formed a close bond as the civil war grew…