POL POT DANCING

Plot

In Pol Pot Dancing we follow a star dancer at the Cambodian royal court, who lovingly raises her husband’s little brother as her own son. Years later, she discovers that her foster son is none other than the dictator Pol Pot himself.

Chea Samy was an outstanding soloist in the royal dance ensemble at the Cambodian Royal Palace in the 1930s. But she was also Pol Pot’s foster mother. After marrying Pol’s older brother, a low-level official at the royal court, she looked after the boy as if he were her own. They lost contact when he disappeared into the underground after his graduation. In 1975, like millions of other Cambodians, she was driven to the rice fields. Only after three years of forced labour did she learn that Pol Pot was the boy she had raised decades before.