Funan

Funan is a stunning piece of animation in which the beauty of the visuals and the horror of the situation are inextricably intertwined.

Do’s tale is resolutely earthbound. He uses animation as an interrogation into the practice of fictional depiction derived from actual atrocities.

The last half hour of Funan is so heavy that the film effectively plays more as tragedy than as triumph, all the more impactful for being true.

It's an education suitable for both children ready to see the world's shadows, and for adults who may still not comprehend Southeast Asian history beyond the Vietnam War.

Funan is structured as a series of carefully choreographed set pieces in which things go from bad to worse to unimaginably awful.

Despite some narrative cliches, the painstaking way that the movie documents a very dark period in Cambodian history is a noteworthy achievement.

There are hints that the film will scale itself to the broader historical context of this era, but the screenplay never elaborates on the ethnic strife the undergirds the Cambodian genocide.