WATCH: Harrowing trailer of Angelina Jolie’s film on Cambodian children under Khmer Rouge

After more than 10 years, Angelina Jolie’s adaptation of “First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers” has a trailer.

The actress and humanitarian read the memoir of Loung Ung who survived the Pol Pot regime as a child soldier several years ago. Jolie contacted Ung who eventually co-wrote the film’s screenplay with her, reports Deadline.

Under the dictator Pol Pot, the Communist party Khmer Rouge committed genocide in its attempt to form a classless peasant society. Ung was born to a high-ranking official and was 5 when the Khmer Rouge stormed Phnom Penh. Her family had to hide and eventually separated from one another, with Ung left to train as a child soldier.

The trailer depicts the horrific takeover and what Cambodian children were subjected to in order to survive the country’s dark era.

Watch the trailer here:

Controversy surrounded the film when Vanity Fair reported that the audition process for children involved placing money on a table and telling the children they could take it. Afterwards, the children would be caught and asked why they needed it.

Angelina Jolie directs a film on the Khmer Rouge.  Image: Netflix

Jolie refuted the allegations in a statement: “I am upset that a pretend exercise in an improvisation, from an actual scene in the film, has been written about as if it was a real scenario. The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting. I would be outraged myself if this had happened.”

Producer Rithy Panh, who also survived the Khmer Rouge said, “Ahead of the screen tests, the casting crew showed the children the camera and the sound recording material. It explained to them that they were going to be asked to act out a part: to pretend to steal petty cash or a piece of food left unattended and then get caught in the act. It relates to a real episode from the life of Loung Ung, and a scene in the movie, when she and her siblings were caught by the Khmer Rouge and accused of stealing.”

Released through Netflix, the film is produced, directed and written by Jolie. Her son Maddox, whom she adopted from Cambodia, is involved in it as well.  /ra

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