Leslie Barnes and her co-editor Joseph Mai recently discussed their new volume, The Cinema of Rithy Panh: Everything has a Soul, on the New Books Network. Born in 1964, Rithy Panh survived the Khmer Rouge regime and later emigrated to France where he studied film. Now the most important filmmaker in Cambodia and in the Khmer diaspora, Panh is committed to mentoring a new generation of Cambodian storytellers; in 2005, helped found the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center, which trains young Khmer filmmakers and film and sound archivists. The essays in this volume cover the breadth of Panh’s work, focusing on how his films engage locally and globally with questions of dignity, justice, exploitation and cinematic practice in the wake of mass violence. 

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