Angelina Jolie to direct Cambodia movie

Actress-director Angelina Jolie is teaming with online streaming service Netflix to direct the film “First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers”. The film is based on a memoir from Cambodian author and human-rights activist Loung Ung about surviving the deadly Khmer Rouge regime, reports variety.com.

Jolie will direct and produce the project from a script she co-adapted with Ung. Cambodian director and producer Rithy Panh, helmer of the Oscar-nominated foreign-language film “The Missing Picture”, will also be a producer.

The film will be made available to members of the streaming service in late 2016 and will be submitted to major international festivals. Ung was five-years-old when the Khmer Rouge regime assumed power over Cambodia in 1975 and began a four-year reign of terror and genocide in which nearly two million Cambodians died.

Forced from her family’s home in Phnom Penh, Ung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans while her six siblings were sent to labour camps. Ung survived and wrote “First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers,” which was first published in 2000.