Angelina Jolie Pitt and her son are coming to Netflix!
Angelina Jolie Pitt announced her next film project, and it sounds incredible and powerful and filled with wisdom and sadness. The film is an adaptation of Loung Ung’s memoir First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, and will be produced and directed by Jolie. It will be released via Netflix. Maddox, Jolie’s Cambodian-born 13-year-old son, will be involved in the film, but the announcement didn’t state how.
Father, published in 2000,recounts Ung’s life under the Khmer Rouge, a dictatorial regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. They were notoriously cruel and violent, and 2 million Cambodians died during the genocide of their rule. Ung’s memoir discusses the years she spent training as a child soldier during that time. It’s a powerful and moving work, and one Jolie has been working on adapting into a film for over a decade.
“Films like this are hard to watch but important to see,” Jolie Pitt said during the announcement. “They are also hard to get made. Netflix is making this possible, and I am looking forward to working with them and excited that the film will reach so many people.”
“I was deeply affected by Loung’s book,” she said. “It deepened forever my understanding of how children experience war and are affected by the emotional memory of it. And it helped me draw closer still to the people of Cambodia, my son’s homeland. It is a dream to be able to adapt this book for the screen, and I’m honored to work alongside Loung and filmmaker Rithy Panh.”
“Angelina and I met in 2001 in Cambodia, and immediately, I trusted Angelina’s heart,” Ung, who adapted the book with Jolie, said. “Through the years, we have become close friends, and my admiration for Angelina as a woman, a mother, a filmmaker and a humanitarian has only grown. It is with great honor that I entrust my family’s story to Angelina to adapt into a film.”
The film is expected to be available on Netflix next fall.
Netflix is raising its prices. Boo.
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[Image via Twitter]
