For many years, I have been looking for the missing picture: a photograph taken between 1975 and 1979 by the Khmer Rouge when they ruled over Cambodia. On its own, an image cannot prove mass murder, but it gives us a ground for thinking and recalling a history. I searched for it vainly in the archives, in old papers and in the country villages of Cambodia. Today I know that this image must be missing. I was not really looking for it; would it not be obscene and insignificant? So I created it. What I give you today is neither the picture nor the search for a unique image, but the picture of a quest: the quest that cinema allows.
 
Rithy PANH was born in Phnom Penh. Imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge in 1975, he escaped in 1979, moving first to Thailand, then to Paris, where he studied at L’Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques. His work includes the documentaries S21, The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003), and the docudrama The Burnt Theatre (2005). The Missing Picture (2013) is his latest film.