The actress and ‘First They Killed My Father’ director hopes to go before the cameras in the next few months.
Angelina Jolie says she plans to return to work after taking “over a year off” to deal with a complicated “family situation” following her split with Brad Pitt, the actress-director tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Speaking at the Telluride Film Festival, where her new movie about Cambodia, First They Killed My Father, had a well-regarded debut (it’s set to be released in select theaters and on Netflix on Sept. 15), Jolie also said she would one day like to give up acting in favor of directing, if possible.
She said she had not yet committed to her next project, though a Maleficent sequel is likely to happen this year.
Jolie sat down Sept. 3, along with Loung Ung, the Cambodian refugee who has been living in America since 1980, and whose book is the basis for Jolie’s movie, which follows Ung’s story as she went through the horrors of the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s. An edited transcript of their conversation with THR follows.
Loung, where are you from in Cambodia?
LOUNG UNG: Phnom Penh. I immigrated in 1980 to Burlington, Vermont, and moved around a bit and ended up in Cleveland. In 1980, I was 10. My oldest brother and his wife ended up leaving Cambodia and arriving in a refugee camp in Thailand, where we stayed for six months. Then we were sponsored by the Holy Family Church to come to America, having no idea at all where we were going to end up, and were quite surprised when we ended up in Vermont. We didn’t know there was such a thing, because when you are in the refugee camp, they show you America by showing you movies on the big screen, and none of the movies were Vermont – maybe of L.A. or New York or Chicago, I was expecting big buildings and diverse people.
When did you first go back?
UNG: I made my first trip back in 1995; the U.S. and Cambodia did not have a diplomatic relationship until 1993. I’ve made over 35 trips since.
ANGELINA JOLIE: You have a place there.
UNG: I have my sister in a village. So I bought a little piece of land for myself. That sister and another brother still live in Cambodia.
Angelina, what in Loung’s story were you unable to get into the film?
JOLIE: There was a scene where they came to abduct a woman, make her a bride, that she witnessed, a forced marriage.
Did that happen a lot?
UNG: It happened when I was there. It happened a lot in different places of the country, forced marriage of a young girl to a soldier, yes, during that war.
When did you fully come to understand what had taken place there, beyond your own experiences?
UNG: Probably not until I was in high school. I went through the American school system, and studied English history and Russian history Chinese and history and American history, but there was no Cambodian history in any place, and also there weren’t any teachers who could suggest and recommend books and videos. In around 1985, National Geographic came out with a beautiful Cambodian issue, that my brother has kept to this day; and I remember being really touched by that, but I didn’t really want to deal with it; I wanted to assimilate and be like everybody else. But I started reading when the war movies came out — Platoon, Full Metal Jacket — and then the boys began making horrible comments to me. There was a line in [pone film] where the Vietnamese girls in the movie would say, “For good time, five dollar,” and the boys would think it was funny to say it to me. So I started reading about it to educate myself, because the best way to fight any kind of bullying is to be educated and to have knowledge, and I was able to use that against them and educate them. But it wasn’t until college that I was able to actually get books and look for friends who could read the books with me. It’s been a long time.
Have you had any therapy?
UNG: I’ve had a lot of therapy. It’s tremendous. It’s been a long journey. There are all different forms of therapy. In the West, we look at wanting to get to closure; and I’ve learned through many forms of therapy, there’s no such thing as closure, there’s only a journey to get stronger, to be more healthy, to be more balanced. I have by friends, the therapy with Angie. We talk a lot.
Where do you live now?
UNG: Cleveland.
[To Jolie:] And you’re in L.A.?
JOLIE: Yes, but we’ve known each other for 16 years. She comes over. We hang out.
UNG: I have my writing therapy. For me, writing and friends therapy is an internal journey where you go in deep, you reflect, you try to heal your inner child. But as an activist, there’s the outward, going wide therapy, where you get to realize at a certain point that talking about yourself gets boring. And it’s also unhealthy to be so much into yourself. At some point, you have got to be able to look at the issue and say, “It’s not about you. It’s about a culture, a people, a nation, a family.” This is why I loved working with Angelina on the film; it is that philosophy in physical form, making it about all of us.
Angelina, you’re now a Cambodian citizen, or have joint US-Cambodian citizenship. When, why?
JOLIE: It was over 10 years ago – I’ve been working in the country for about 14 years. I went for Lara Croft and then very soon after I came back for the United Nations, doing some de-mining work, learning about returnees. I met with Loung, met with the UNHCR (The Office of the…
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