A beautifully made documentary, New Year Baby is made by a young Texas woman, daughter of Cambodian refugees who survived the genocide. When her parents left in 1979, her mother was pregnant with her, the baby of the family.
To better understand her family and the culture of her parents, the young woman goes to Cambodia with her parents. It is a poignant and unforgettable story: the relationship between the parents and their love for their four children; seeing their extended family again after all these years; and a reminder of the horrors of Pol Pot and the two million people killed there.
Three fourths of the Cambodian population is made up of people who were born in the late seventies and later.
Her mother spent three years in a work camp, but could only bear to stay for three minutes when they revisited the place.
The relationship between the narrator and her father was especially beautiful. Although her parents were forced to marry by the khmer rouge, they came to love each other. In a rigorous journey out of Cambodia and into Thailand, the father singlehandedly saved his pregnant wife, the three other children, and an aunt.
I loved the format of this documentary--interviews spliced with animated drawings. This is the best and most powerful documentary I've seen this summer.
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