The film stems from a memoir by Loung Ung of the terror she as a young girl and others in her family faced when Phnom Penh was invaded in 1975 and brutalized as part of the Khmer Rouge genocide against its victims. Ung, who collaborated on the screenplay with Jolie, was forced to flee. Her father had been in the military and had to run for his life, which meant that his family would also be targeted.

The story unfolds through the perspective of Loung, played as a youngster by the excellent Sreymoch Sareum. She and her siblings are forced into working the fields and being subjected to the austere, doctrinaire discipline that militates against owning anything privately and trains youths to be vicious fighters loathing the stated enemy.

The film depicts the intense brutality and the heroic efforts to escape and survive against all odds. Jolie doesn’t flinch in dramatizing the destruction and desperation. There are both emotionally touching scenes as well as horrific ones. Her location filming is excellent and she exhibits talent for raising a work to epic level, with very convincing casting to achieve maximum reality.

Jolie and her production team succeed in providing a sprawling look at the Cambodian tragedy of that era, always illuminated via the struggle of Loung Ung and her family. Fortunately, there is also an early reference to President Richard Nixon’s unjustified U.S. assault on the country.