Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie, second from left, waves with her adopted children Pax, left, Maddox, center, Zahara, third from right, and Shiloh, second from right, while they wait to meet Cambodia's King Norodom Sihamoni in Siem Reap province, Cambodia, on Saturday, Feb. 18, 2017. (AP Photo)
Angelina Jolie will unveil her new film on the horrors of the Khmer Rouge era on Saturday at the ancient Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia, a country the star shares a deep affinity with through her adopted son Maddox.
Cambodia’s king and survivors of the communist regime will be among some 1,500 people invited to the debut screening of First They Killed My Father, directed by Jolie and based on the memoirs of Loung Ung.
Loung was five years old when Khmer Rouge troops, led by Pol Pot, swept into Phnom Penh plunging her family into a harrowing ordeal that saw them sent to brutal labour camps before her eventual escape to the US.
In its quest for an agrarian Marxist utopia, the regime killed up to two million Cambodians between 1975-79 through execution, starvation and overwork.
It is the second movie by Jolie to tackle the subject of genocide; in 2011, she made a film about the Bosnian conflict featuring mostly local actors.
But her latest silver screen offering is more personal.
Jolie adopted her first child, Maddox, from an orphanage in Cambodia’s western Battambang province in 2002 and she has been given Cambodian citizenship.