Cambodian pride was on display in Cannes

Hearing Rithy Panh talk about his nerves before the screening of his latest film at the Cannes Film Festival in France, it’s hard to believe how frequently his work has been shown on the Croisette. Not once, not twice, but actually seven times since Rice People was invited to unspool at the annual event in 1994.

“I really don’t feel comfortable at the screenings here, I have to walk away and go somewhere else when the film started,” he said at a terrace at the festival’s main venue the day after Exile received its world premiere on Friday night. “Here, sometimes it can be horrible; half of the people would go away [before films end].”

But the Paris-educated filmmaker’s reputation in Cannes – and France – has been on the up in the past two decades, a trajectory culminating in The Missing Picture winning the top award at the Un Certain Regard section in 2013.

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