American actress-filmmaker Angelina Jolie on Saturday will screen in Siem Reap the movie “First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers,” the first Hollywood movie on the Khmer Rouge genocide, shot completely in Khmer and in Cambodia.

“I wanted to understand what my son’s birth parents may have gone through. And I wanted to know him better and I wanted to know this country better,” Jolie said at a press conference on Saturday.

Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni and Queen Mother Norodom Monineath will attend the screening, scheduled to begin 7 pm onwards at the Terrace of the Elephants, located within the Angkor Thom temple complex on the outskirts of Siem Reap.

The movie, co-produced by the Oscar-nominated Cambodian director, Rithy Panh, and distributed by online entertainment platform Netflix, is an adaptation of the memoirs of the Cambodian activist Loung Ung during the years the Khmer Rouge era (1975-1979).

The movie, told from the perspective of a five-year-old girl, tells the horrors of the massive evacuation of Phnom Penh and her fight for survival during those years, when a quarter of the population of Cambodia (close to 1.7 million people) died of hunger, forced labor and executions.

“I wanted to focus not just on the war but on the love of family and on the beauty of the country,” Jolie explained.

Rithy Panh, who also survived the Khmer Rouge period, said at the press conference that to understand history, it is first necessary to write it.

Actress Sveng Socheata, who plays the role of Loung Ung in the movie, thanked Jolie for telling the story to the world.

Thousands of people, mostly Cambodians, also worked in the movie as extras, technicians and in other tasks, and it was shot in various locations in the country between November 2015 to February 2016, including Battambang, where Maddox Chivan, whom Jolie adopted in 2002, was born.

Jolie also said that Maddox was present during the filming in order to help her understand his origins better.

After several screenings open to the public in Cambodia, “First They Killed My Father” will be released globally by Netflix in September. EFE