Rithy Panh: "Who Am I to Judge?" – Filming as Resistance in a Digital Age

Worried about the future of cinema, the Cambodian filmmaker, who presided over the Locarno Festival jury in 2025, delivers a scathing critique of social media and their impact on our relationship to the world and memory. Meeting with an artist – as part of Locarno Meets – for whom filming is an act of resistance.

Rithy Panh

"Who Am I to Judge?"

Presiding over a jury has never been a sinecure for Rithy Panh. When asked about this responsibility, the filmmaker sketches an embarrassed smile. "Oh yes! I've been on juries in the past, but it's always very difficult, because I'm a filmmaker too. I know how hard it is to have an idea, to find a budget, so many responsibilities. Sometimes I've failed, sometimes I've succeeded."

This humility, rare in a milieu where egos clash, says a lot about the man who has devoted his life to filming the unspeakable.

Yet, it is with this same disarming humility that the 61-year-old Franco-Cambodian director accepted, in August 2025, the presidency of the jury for the 78th edition of the Locarno Festival. A role he assumes conscientiously, but not without unease: "Who am I to judge something? It's very difficult to say what's good, what's not, and to try to find arguments."

But very quickly, the conversation veers off. Far from ceremonial considerations about the competition, Rithy Panh prefers to talk about what burns him: the state of our digital civilization, the solitude behind screens, and the memory being assassinated by algorithms.

Isolation Behind the Screen

For Rithy Panh, the diagnosis is clear-cut. "Social networks" are a lure, an oxymoron that masks a darker reality. "I like debating with them [the young people] and I try to learn. I'm very interested in what's happening on social networks. Because I don't see what's social about it. Social networks, yes. Social networks, no. They call it social networks, but I don't see..."

This attention to younger generations is not new for Rithy Panh, who multiplies encounters in schools. He seeks a different perspective there.

But what he observes worries him. TikTok culture, short formats, frenzied consumption of videos between two bus stops: all this composes a new, fragmented, solitary relationship to the image.

And then there is this gesture, this universal posture turned symptom. Panh mimes it, neck bent, eyes down:

"You have cinema in your hand, you have photography in your hand, but all the time, you put your head down like this. And you're in your room, you're in your transport, you're in your toilet, but you're not in the theater. You're not with the other."

This lowered head is one of absence from the world. The one that cuts you off from the gaze of the other, from shared presence. "What is culture? It's putting people together and exchanging." The formula is simple, almost childlike, but it touches the heart of the problem: we have confused technical connection with human bond.

This posture creates, according to him, a generation "isolated, not in solitude."

An essential nuance, which he takes care to emphasize: "Sometimes, solitude is good, but this is isolated." Solitude is chosen, inhabited, fruitful. Involuntary isolation is empty, sterile.

And yet, in this gilded prison, we think ourselves sovereign. "But we think we are kings of the world, because you can photograph the pizza on your plate and send it."

The image is comical, almost absurd, but it speaks to the illusory omnipotence of the digital consumer, king of a fake world.

The Mirage of Digital Freedom

The director of The Missing Picture goes further. He sees in social platforms a new face of totalitarianism, all the more dangerous because it disguises itself as participatory democracy. "Our time now is the time of totalitarianism. We think we're free."

Free? Yes, technically. "You're free, yes, but you don't need to insult someone on Facebook or something else. But everyone gives their opinion." This freedom of speech, however, is only a lure carefully designed by the architects of the digital world.

"It's very smart of the high-tech people, because they go straight to the ego. They make you believe it's a kind of democracy. Everyone can say something. But unfortunately, there are a lot of idiots who now have the same power as good poets or good philosophers. That's the problem."

This facade equality levels everything down, giving the same platform to the thinker and the fool. In this great digital bazaar, landmarks blur, hierarchies of value collapse.

Power, moreover, has changed hands. Panh notes it with biting irony: "It's not a journalist who has power, it's an influencer. What does that mean? It means he influences people. It's fast, it's manipulative. But influencers are there to sell something."

This drift questions the very place of the artist, the thinker, the poet.

"What is the work of a director? What is the work of a journalist? What is poetry? What is reflection?"

So many questions that remain suspended, unanswered, in a world where everything is equal and everything is for sale.

"I'm a bit worried because we have less and less space. At the technology level, we have many possibilities, but in fact, we have less and less freedom and less and less space."

The paradox is cruel: never have we had so many tools to express ourselves, never have we been so little free.

Memory Assassinated by the Algorithm

The former deportee of the Khmer Rouge regime, who has devoted his career to documenting the unspeakable—from S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003) to The Missing Picture (2013)—sees in the digital flux a machine to destroy memory.

The infernal cycle of news—

"Today we talk about Ukraine, tomorrow Gaza, the day after tomorrow something else, Iran or Trump"—prevents any deep thought. "Donald Trump uses it very well. It's like changing things every day. You don't have time to reflect. It's too fast. The digital thing is something like destroying memory. Cinema is not like that."

This speed, this frantic succession of crises and indignations, produces a form of impotent voyeurism. The interviewer asks if he thinks we have become "news voyeurs rather than active." The answer comes: "Of course. You're right. As I told you, it's too fast. We are human beings. We need time. We must learn."

Yet, even the seventh art is not spared by this generalized acceleration. Rithy Panh observes with melancholy the erosion of its language, the standardization of images. "Even digital cinema is already affected. Because of AI, because of lighting. When you watch an Antonioni film and a film today, you see how they place the light."

His gaze sharpens even more on contemporary productions: "Some films, like Netflix films, talk a lot." A lot of noise, little meaning. A lot of effects, little light in both the literal and figurative sense.

His remedy? A demanding education

"That's why cinema must be taught in school. Not just for those who want to make films, but taught in school, like you read Shakespeare or something like that. Take a classic Ozu film and try to analyze it."

Learning to see, learning to look, learning to take time—that's what could save future generations from digital drowning.

But the problem is deeper: "The problem with cinema is that there is no space." No more space for demanding films, no more space for journalists who want to take the time to investigate. "Like you, journalists. You can't do anything, but no one will give you money to spend 20 days in India to understand what Bollywood is. No one."

Rebirth Through Clay and Grace

It is perhaps in his work with clay figurines, which have become his signature since The Missing Picture, that Rithy Panh finds an answer to this too-fast world. These small sculptures, born from river clay, kneaded by hand, dried in the sun, carry within them an ancient memory.

"They don't move. They are like masks, African masks. A mask is art. The figurine is art too, when you put it in the film. But in our daily life, the mask is spirit."

These figurines, Panh refuses to animate them, to make them move in stop-motion. Their strength is elsewhere, in their very immobility. "The movement is in the camera, in the gaze, in the spectator. The figurine remains, impassive, silent witness. I filmed for three months and discovered an idea. What happened to me was a small clay figurine. I said to myself, that's the one. Because it's just river clay, worked with hands, shaken by the sun, and we made the film."

This discovery, almost accidental, speaks to the share of inspiration that escapes all control, all planning. Cinema as encounter, including with the humblest matter.

"I Am Not a Survivor, I Am a Filmmaker"

This distinction, Rithy Panh insists on formulating it clearly, almost vehemently. "I am not a survivor. I am a filmmaker. I accept it, but sometimes I feel untenable."

The word "survivor" wounds him, reduces him to what he suffered, not to what he built. "Personally, it affects me a lot. That's why I try to bring creativity. I try to put in all my films my point of view, my sensitivity, my cinematography. That just means I am there. Totalitarianism cannot destroy that. It's my imagination."

Imagination as the last fortress, as irrefutable proof that oppression has not won. Filming is existing. It's telling the executioner: you didn't get my skin, you won't get my soul, you won't get my gaze.

The Quest for Innocence

Faced with triumphant streaming and the decline of dark theaters, Rithy Panh confides his dismay: "I've lost my hope for cinema. I preferred to go to the cinema like you go to church. I believe in cinema. I have an interest in cinema."

This faith wavers when he sees "very few films going to theaters, to show to the audience, when I see the audience falling year after year." So he seeks an outlet, a path back to the essential. "I like to find my childhood and my innocence. No CGI, no AI, something like that."

No tricks, no special effects, no artificial intelligence. Just an eye, an object, a light. Rediscover the child's gaze discovering the world, and with it the power to transfigure it through the image.

The tool matters little, ultimately. What counts is the intention, the freshness of the gaze, the freedom of the gesture.

For Panh teaches a lot, and from this teaching he draws as much as he gives: "When I teach, I learn a lot from these young people." He evokes a project in Saint-Domingue, a student who sends him something every week, with his phone, his camera, his archives.

The Saints of Cinema

In this quest, Rithy Panh has his intercessors, his tutelary figures. He speaks of them with almost religious fervor. "I told my students, I have a saint in cinema. His name is Chris Marker. You must have a saint, whatever saint it is, it can be Tarkovsky, Fellini, or other, but mine is Chris Marker."

This devotion has something touching about a man otherwise so little inclined to conventional piety. "When I have problems, I talk to him. I say, Chris, come help me. Come help me now. Because there is something in his cinema, something powerful. The most essential for cinema is freedom, not to lose freedom."

Freedom, the key word for cinema according to Panh. The one he had to conquer through hard struggle, he who came to cinema "very late, by accident."

The story of this discovery deserves to be told. "When you're an immigrant, you speak very badly, you go to Chinese fast-food. That's your job. You go to taxi. Because you have to survive. You have to forget. Forget and rebuild your life."

In this life of survival and forgetting, he wanted to be a carpenter. "I wanted to be a carpenter because it's the work of a silent man. You don't speak. The wood smells good. You have to read the wood. You can't cut as you want. You have to read it first." This reading of wood, this listening to matter, already foreshadows his relationship to cinema.

"By accident, fortunately for me, my teacher gave me a camera with three reels of Super 8. Without knowing cinema, I went to make images like that. Because I'm silent. I don't speak. Cinema is like that."

This entry into cinema through silence, through pure image, will mark his entire work. "It's very funny. I make a magnificent film and I don't know what editing is." A friend lends him a machine, teaches him the basics. And when the latter watches the film, he compares it to Bresson. "It's good. But I don't know who Bresson is. Who is this guy?"

At the time, no internet, no video at hand. "It was very hard to find a Bresson film. I didn't have video because it was very expensive." Someone then tells him about a film school in Paris, where you can see all the films for free. "It sounds like a dream. Yes, I take the train and go to Paris."

Grace According to Tarkovsky

What film marked him first? The answer surprises: "The first film that touched me was Andrei Rublev." A Russian film, about a 15th-century icon painter, shot in black and white, three hours long. A surprising choice for a young Cambodian who doesn't speak French, knows nothing of Christianity or Slavic culture.

"When I watched the film, of course, I didn't understand what Christianity was, what the culture of this Russian film was. I didn't even know who Andrei Tarkovsky was. But the film seems full of grace."

Grace. The word returns, insistent. "I watched the film and came back. I seemed to be walking. My feet weren't touching the ground. The film seemed to float. I had a very strange feeling."

This quasi-mystical experience upsets him to the point of making him doubt his own vocation.

Yet he perseveres, goes through periods of deep doubt. "A mentor told me I was a very depressed philosopher. It was a very depressing period. I come from a poor country. Making a film costs a lot."

This vertiginous questioning haunts him. The answer will come from Africa, from a meeting with Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cissé. "I went to Mali to make a film with Souleymane Cissé. He told me he was right about the image. We had something to discuss together."

One night, he wakes him up at one in the morning. Cissé recounts a dream. Panh films. The nocturnal voice is not the same, it has "a magnificent accent." But Panh understands not a word: Cissé speaks in Bambara. "Do you know what it was? No, until editing. What was it? Light, grace, softness, something like that."

This experience marks him forever. "In every person, there is a kind of grace. I understand that. Grace is like dignity in my mind. It must be one of the most beautiful and important things the camera must capture. It changed a lot in my decision to return to cinema."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tltsy8gdB6A

Surviving, Filming, Transmitting

The path has not been easy. "It's very hard when you have no family, you're an immigrant, you have to live. In cinema, it's very bourgeois. You need money, you need family, all my colleagues have family, they have a studio, something like that. Or you have to do business with big companies, governments."

But he held on, carried by this conviction that filming is necessary. A friend lends him his house for six months. He lives frugally, saves, perseveres.

This "you" is us, spectators, critics, lovers of cinema. It's to us that he launches this call, this invitation not to despair, to still seek light, grace, dignity in images.

To take the time to look, really, like going to church. To resist, through the gaze, the speed of the world and programmed forgetting.

For in the end, that may be the essence of Rithy Panh's message: filming is resisting. Resisting erasure, the dictatorship of algorithms, connected solitude. Resisting, simply, by lifting one's head. To see the other. To be with him. So that cinema remains what it should never have ceased to be: an encounter.