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The enigma that was Pol Pot still remains to this day, with parts of his true story being relatively unknown even Cambodians, in a sense of mystery that was actually cultivated by him during his regime. One of the lesser known facts, which Pot himself kept hidden, was that he grew up in the royal court, as his older brother was a low-level official there, with Chea Samy, one of the greatest artists of Cambodia's ritualistic dance tradition, functioning as his foster mother, and also the one who introduced him to the concept of the particular type of dancing.

Pol Pot Dancing is screening at Thessaloniki Documentary Festival

In that fashion, Enrique Sanchez Lansch's film unfolds under three main narratives. The first one is the life of Chea Samy, before, during and after the regime, the second the particular dancing, connected to both the aforementioned and her student, Sophiline Cheam,...

In one of the most compelling films to hold its world premiere at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, archive footage shows an apparently amiable man dressed in black sitting for an interview with a Yugoslav journalist. The year is approximately 1977.

“Comrade, you are the first person to hear my biography,” the man says with a warm laugh.

The man is Pol Pot, the Cambodian dictator then in the middle of his four-year genocidal reign of terror atop his country, a period in which a quarter of the Cambodia’s population perished.

Pol Pot in the Cambodian jungle in 1980.

Director Enrique Sánchez Lansch tracked down the incredibly rare interview in the archives of Serbian TV. Pol Pot almost never spoke to journalists, and rarely, if ever, told the truth about his background. In the 1977 conversation, he paints a humble picture of his childhood – saying he grew up the son of a “peasant farmer.

The 26th edition of the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (TiDF) kicks off today (March 7) with 12 features screening in international competition.

Several titles are making their world premiere at the festival including Johatsu - Into Thin Air from Andreas Hartmann and Arata Mori about the thousands of people who disappear in Japan each year.

Also playing is Sundance award-winner A New Kind Of Wilderness from Silje Evensmo Jacobsen. The Norweigan film, which won the grand jury prize in documentary, follows a family living in the wild who are forced to confront contemporary society after a tragic event.

Fellow Sundance-award winner Nocturnes...

Screening this evening Jan. 6 as part of the Uruguay’s Arca Festival, “Inside the Uffizi” has already done steady business for boutique Berlin-based documentary shingle Magnetfilm, headed by Georg Gruber.

Rights have been sold to Sky in Italy and Hugo East for China, and an online release planned on streamers via Docodigital scheduled before the end of March on iTunes, Google, Amazon, Rakuten for Tvod and Est in the U.S, Canada, Spain, selected Spanish-language territories in Latin America such as Argentina, and Italy.

Directed by award-winning German film-maker Corinna Belz (“Gerhard Richter Painting”) together with Enrique Sánchez Lansch, the film takes us behind the scenes of the world’s second oldest art museum, the Uffizi in Florence, Italy, pausing to allow us to take in masterworks by Renaissance giants like Caravaggio, Botticelli, Titian and Gentileschi, with some lavish camera work lingering in mouth-watering detail in what is a very special place for art lovers.