Netflix has announced that Angelina Jolie will direct and produce an original film based on the memoir of Cambodian author and human rights activist Loung Ung, about surviving Cambodia’s deadly Khmer Rouge regime as a child.
The script was co-adapted with Ung, so that it’s as true an adaptation of First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers as possible.
If you’re not familiar with the Ung’s harrowing story, it’s pretttttttyyyyy hectic. Here’s the book’s synopsis:
One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot‘s Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung’s family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.
Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung’s powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.
Jolie read the memoir when it was published back in 2000, and became close friends with Ung after the pair met in Cambodia the following year.
She’s spoken of how “deeply affected” she was by her story, particularly as her son with Brad Pitt, Maddox, was born in Cambodia. (FYI Maddox is to appear in the film, though it’s not known in what capacity. Our guess is an extra).
“It deepened forever my understanding of how children experience war and are affected by the emotional memory of it. And it helped me draw closer still to the people of Cambodia, my son’s homeland. “It is a dream come true to be able to adapt this book for the screen.”
Working alongside Jolie as producer will be super-famous Cambodian director and producer Rithy Panh, director of the Oscar-nominated Best Foreign Language film The Missing Picture.
Ung has said it’s with “great honour” that she trusts her family’s story to Jolie.
The film will be available on Netflix in late 2016.
