This year at SIFF I was struck by two films seemingly about the same thing (dictatorships disguised as Communism), but from completely different perspectives (and in different countries). While the story, the people and the outcomes varied, the toll on the peoples of both countries were felt just as palpably. I didn’t expect to be so intrigued and taken in by these stories but here we are. Below I give you the low down on each and why I think, if you can manage it, you should seek them out at a SIFF venue if they run them again outside of the festival.

Meeting Pol Pot (2024 | France | 113 minutes | Rithy Panh)

This entirely effecting and eye-opening film is based on real events and reimagined by stitching together interviews divulged in Elizabeth Becker’s novel When the War Was Over (a UW graduate), found footage, and personal stories. After the United States had left Vietnam, Pol Pot grew into power within the Khmer Rouge, the Communist party that had taken over Cambodia. While Vietnam and Cambodia still had skirmishes, the larger threat was Pol Pot’s insistence on “Year One”. This is the theory that all previous belief systems and ideas had to be wiped out to start fresh with a better and more equitable society. What that meant to Pot was decimating nearly a quarter of the population of his own country.

Pol Pot was well-educated and one of his collegiate institutions happened to be in Paris, France where he was given a scholarship to study radio electronics. While he ultimately failed his courses and lost his scholarship, the story of Meeting With Pol Pot essentially hinges on the correspondence he maintained for over a decade with a Frenchman accompanying a journalist and photographer. The three of them were lead through a series of obviously set up narratives to shed a positive light on Pol Pot’s Communist regime. Every person they came into contact with were either heavily watched and influenced by Pot’s military forces or the military guards themselves that kept a constant eye on the outsiders.

The New Year That Never Came (2024 | Romania, Serbia | 138 minutes | Bogdan Mureşanu)

The New Year That Never Came (TNYTNC) takes place on the cusp of the Romanian revolution in 1989. The country has been covered by a cloud of Communism that promised equity for all, but ended up suppression. Six lives that overlap in seemingly random ways tell their story, but all share a the thread of fear. The six stories give a glimpse into every aspect of life that can be threatened by overwhelming power: an actress called upon to perform on a New Years’ propaganda show, the producer that will go to ridiculous lengths to make the show work while constantly concerned about his son, the son that dared to rally against the government now running for his life, a mother who is forced to give up her home and a lifetime of memories in the name of progress, her son who battles between a dispossessed ex-Marxist mother and Communist wife, and finally a blue-collar worker whose frustrations and anger toward the current regime may be found out because of a simple slip from his young boy.

While having six stories intertwined, either gently passing by each other or slamming together like a car into a wall, may seem confusing and possibly difficult to keep track of. Rather, the ties that bound them remained stable and the seamless way Mureşanu wove the individual stories together never felt forced. He didn’t make every scene do a hand off, when it made sense that these characters interact, they did so, otherwise their lives moved forward with emotions evident in every step. While it wasn’t a dark comedy per say, there was a lightness to it at times. Perhaps to say life wasn’t always lemons, there was some lemonade to be shared as well. Or… equally as likely it was to add gravity to the times that needed it, so the weight of oppression was felt by us all.

While our current situation in the US is too close to some of the events on the screen during TNYTNC, it’s easy to escape into this story appreciate the varied lives lived within it and maybe even find some solace in the exhilarating outcome.

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