This is the heart-wrenching true story of Leav Sila, one of countless Cambodian mothers who did all they could to keep their families alive, only to see the vast majority killed or starved to death in the fateful years of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Playing her mother in the film, screenwriter Kauv Sotheary is one of only two of Leav Sila’s children who survived. She and her husband, Chhay Bora, used their life savings to fund this project, a story they knew had to be told, “to bring back the memory, to show what happened and to connect the older generation and the young.”
Beautiful sunsets, lush green rice fields and waterfalls contrast with the brutality of the Khmer Rouge oppression that left almost two million dead between 1975 and 1979. This is the first Cambodian feature film on the Khmer genocide and the country’s first submission to the Academy Awards in 18 years. Lost Loves gives a brutal yet captivating insight into this extremely painful chapter in the history of Cambodia.