If you’ve spent any time scrolling through Netflix’s historical drama section, you’ve probably seen the poster. A young girl with an intense, haunting gaze. It's the face of Loung Ung. Most people know the movie, but the book First They Killed My Father is where the real, visceral weight of the Cambodian Genocide lives. Honestly, it’s a difficult watch and an even harder read. But it’s necessary.
History is messy.
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh. They didn't come as conquerors in the traditional sense; they came as "liberators" who immediately turned the world upside down. Loung Ung was just five years old. Imagine that for a second. One day you’re a child of privilege in a bustling city, and the next, you’re part of a forced mass exodus into the countryside. The title First They Killed My Father isn't just a dramatic hook. It is the literal, devastating anchor of Loung’s entire survival story.
It changed everything.
The Reality Behind First They Killed My Father
The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, wanted a Year Zero. They wanted to erase Western influence, religion, and the very idea of the "individual." To do this, they targeted the educated. If you wore glasses, you were a target. If you spoke a second language, you were a threat. Loung’s father, Seng Ung, was a high-ranking government official. In the eyes of the Angkar—the "Organization"—he was a dead man walking from the moment the city fell.
The family moved from village to village, desperately trying to hide their past. They wore peasant rags. They dyed their skin with charcoal. They tried to blend into the "Old People"—the rural peasants who were favored by the regime. But you can only hide for so long when the secret police are looking for any excuse to purge the "New People."
It’s a story of starvation. People often focus on the political ideology, but for the survivors, it was about the rice bowl. Or the lack of it. Loung describes eating charcoal to settle her stomach. She describes the hollowed-out eyes of her siblings. When her father was finally taken—led away by soldiers under the guise of "working on a bridge"—it was the beginning of the end for the family unit.
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Why the Movie Adaptation Mattered
Angelina Jolie directed the film version for Netflix in 2017. Some critics were skeptical. "Another Hollywood take on tragedy?" they asked. But Jolie did something different here. She insisted on using an all-Cambodian cast. The dialogue is in Khmer. She filmed on the actual ground where these horrors happened.
Sreymoch Sareum, the young actress who played Loung, delivers a performance that basically relies on her eyes. There isn't a lot of talking. There shouldn't be. In a regime where saying the wrong thing got you a bullet or a shovel to the back of the head, silence was the only survival strategy.
The film serves as a sensory experience of the book’s trauma. You see the vibrant green of the rice paddies—a beauty that stands in sickening contrast to the landmines buried beneath the mud. You feel the claustrophobia of the labor camps. It’s a technical masterpiece, but it’s also a communal act of healing for the Cambodian people, many of whom worked as extras and crew members, processing their own family histories through the production.
Misconceptions About the Cambodian Genocide
A lot of people get the scale wrong. We’re talking about roughly 1.7 to 2 million people dead in just four years. That was a quarter of the population.
People also assume it was a standard war. It wasn't. It was an auto-genocide. A government killing its own people for not being "pure" enough. Loung’s narrative in First They Killed My Father highlights how the regime turned children against parents. They didn't just want to kill bodies; they wanted to kill the concept of family. Loung was eventually sent to a camp for child soldiers. She was trained to plant mines. She was taught to hate.
It's tempting to think of this as ancient history. It happened in the 70s. Many survivors are still alive today, living with the PTSD of what they saw in the Killing Fields. When Loung writes about her father, she isn't just writing about a man; she's writing about the loss of a moral compass in a world that had gone completely insane.
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The Controversy of Memory
Is everything in the book 100% historically accurate? This is a point of debate among scholars. Some survivors and historians have pointed out that a five-year-old’s memory might be clouded or that certain details about the Khmer Rouge’s specific movements feel "off" in the chronology.
But honestly? That misses the point.
First They Killed My Father is a memoir of trauma. It’s about the emotional truth of a child seeing her world burn. Whether a specific event happened in April or June doesn't change the fact that the regime systematically dismantled Loung’s soul. The book captures the feeling of the genocide better than any dry history textbook ever could. It’s the difference between reading a statistic and hearing a scream.
The Long Shadow of Year Zero
Cambodia today is a place of incredible resilience, but the scars are everywhere. You visit Phnom Penh and you see the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S-21). It was a high school turned into a torture center. Then you drive out to Choeung Ek, the most famous of the Killing Fields.
The weight is heavy.
Loung Ung eventually escaped to the United States. She became an activist. She went back. Her journey from a child soldier to a woman who can look at her past without blinking is what gives the story its power. It’s not just a "misery porn" book. It’s a "how did I survive this" manual.
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She survived because of her father’s strength, her mother’s impossible choices, and her own "inner fire" that she often describes as a double-edged sword. That anger kept her alive, but it also threatened to consume her.
Looking Closer at the Aftermath
We often stop the story when the Vietnamese tanks roll in and the Khmer Rouge flee to the jungle. But for the survivors of First They Killed My Father, the trauma didn't end with a liberation. There was the hunger of the refugee camps. There was the "Third Country" resettlement process.
Imagine moving from a jungle labor camp to Vermont. That’s what Loung did. The culture shock is its own kind of violence. She had to learn how to be a person again in a world that had plenty of food and no landmines, while her mind was still stuck in the red dirt of Cambodia.
What You Should Do Next
If you’ve only seen the movie, read the book. It’s deeper. If you’ve read the book, look into the work of the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale. Understanding the "why" behind the Khmer Rouge's rise—the geopolitical mess of the Vietnam War and the secret bombings of Cambodia—is vital context that the personal story doesn't always have the space to cover.
Steps to Deepen Your Understanding:
- Visit (or virtually tour) S-21 and Choeung Ek: Understanding the physical geography of the tragedy makes it real.
- Support Landmine Removal: Cambodia is still one of the most heavily mined countries on Earth. Organizations like the HALO Trust are still doing the work Loung talks about.
- Read "Lucky Child": This is Loung Ung’s sequel. It follows her life in America while her sister stayed in Cambodia. It’s a fascinating look at the "two paths" of survival.
- Watch Rithy Panh’s Documentaries: For a different perspective, the film The Missing Picture uses clay figures to tell the story of the genocide. It's a haunting companion piece.
The story of First They Killed My Father is a reminder that "never again" is a choice we have to make every day. It's about the fragility of civilization. One day you're a child in a city; the next, the city is empty. We owe it to the millions who didn't make it to at least look at the truth, no matter how much it hurts.
The legacy of the Ung family isn't just their death; it's the fact that Loung is still here to tell us what happened. That is the ultimate victory over the Khmer Rouge. They tried to erase her name. Instead, the whole world knows it.