April 1975, The brutal Khmer Rouge Regime overtook Phom Penh. The capital of Cambodia. It was the beginning of the Year Zero and the start of a bloody ideology lead by Pol Pot. The genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge regime all over the country is one of the darkest periods in our modern history. Millions of people died from assault, forced labors and other atrocities.
Films like The Killing Fields and First they Killed My Father, are well made graphic accounts of the horror the Khmer people suffered from 1975 to 1979.
Sons of April is a passion project that has been built during the last two years. The film writing started when two friends, Robin, the director and myself, the producer, were so inspired by my father's book, Chea Seiha, regarding his life under the Khmer Rouge regime and his escape to Thailand.
Our story is about how people could react to survive in dark times, that even relationship you shared as father and son, could be spoiled by the necessity of survival. How a man can sacrifice another life to survive for his family. Our modern society will define such action as bad or selfish. But those times were different. Humanity disappeared… it was only survival. Nothing is white or black.
At that time when your life could end in a fraction of second, what would you have done? What horrible choice we will make to survive?
