Phnom Penh is the capital and most populous city of Cambodia. It has been the national capital since the French protectorate of Cambodia and has grown to become the nation's primate city and its economic, industrial, and cultural centre.
Norodom Sihanouk was a Cambodian statesman, Sangkum and FUNCINPEC politician, film director, and composer who led Cambodia in various capacities throughout his long career, most often as both King and Prime Minister of Cambodia. In Cambodia, he is known as Samdech Euv. During his lifetime, Cambodia was under various regimes, from French colonial rule, a Japanese puppet state (1945), an independent kingdom (1953–1970), a republic (1970–1975), the Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1979), a Vietnamese-backed communist regime (1979–1989), a transitional communist regime (1989–1993) to eventually another kingdom.
Sinn Sisamouth was a Cambodian singer-songwriter active from the 1950s to the 1970s. Widely considered the "King of Khmer Music", Sisamouth, along with Ros Serey Sothea, Pen Ran, Mao Sareth, and other Cambodian artists, was part of a thriving pop music scene in Phnom Penh that blended elements of Khmer traditional music with the sounds of rhythm and blues and rock and roll to develop a Cambodian rock sound. Sisamouth died during the Khmer Rouge regime under circumstances that are unclear.
Ros Serey Sothea was a Cambodian singer. She was active during the final years of the First Kingdom of Cambodia and into the Khmer Republic period. She sang in a variety of genres; romantic ballads emerged as her most popular works. Despite a relatively brief career she is credited with singing hundreds of songs. She also ventured into acting, starring in a few films. Details of her life are relatively scarce. She disappeared during the Khmer Rouge regime of the late 1970s but the circumstances of her fate remain a mystery. Norodom Sihanouk granted Sothea the honorary title "Queen with the Golden Voice."
François Bizot is a French anthropologist. While working as a conservationist in Cambodia, he was held captive by the Khmer Rouge for several months. He was released after being found innocent of spying charges, becoming the only Westerner to survive imprisonment by the Khmer Rouge.
Rithy Panh is a Cambodian documentary film director and screenwriter.
Cinema in Cambodia began in the 1950s, and many films were being screened in theaters throughout the country by the 1960s, which are regarded as the "golden age". After a near-disappearance during the Khmer Rouge regime, competition from video and television has meant that the Cambodian film industry is a small one.
The Bunong are an indigenous Cambodian ethnic minority group. They are found primarily in Mondulkiri province in Cambodia. The Bunong is the largest indigenous highland ethnic group in Cambodia. They have their own language called Bunong, which belongs to Bahnaric branch of Austroasiatic languages. The majority of Bunong people are animists, but a minority of them follows Christianity and Theravada Buddhism. After Cambodia's independence in 1953, Prince Sihanouk created a novel terminology, referring to the country's highland inhabitants, including the Bunong, as Khmer Loeu. Under the People's Republic of Kampuchea (1979-89), the generic term ជនជាតិភាគតិច "ethnic minorities" came to be in use and the Bunong became referred to as ជនជាតិព្នង meaning "ethnic Pnong". Today, the generic term that many Bunong use to refer to themselves is ជនជាតិដើមភាគតិច, which can be translated as "indigenous minority" and involves special rights, notably to collective land titles as an "indigenous community". In Vietnam, Bunong-speaking peoples are recurrently referred to as Mnong.
Pen Sovan was a Cambodian politician and revolutionary who served as the Prime Minister of the Hanoi-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea from 27 June to 5 December 1981. He also served as General Secretary of the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP) from 1979 to 1981. He was arrested and removed from office in December 1981 by the Vietnamese for irritating Lê Đức Thọ, the chief adviser to the PRK government. He was imprisoned in Vietnam until January 1992.
Bophana: A Cambodian Tragedy, or Bophana, une tragédie cambodgienne, is a 1996 French-Cambodian made-for-television docudrama directed by Rithy Panh.
Nic Dunlop is a photographer and author.
Enemies of the People is a 2009 British-Cambodian documentary film written and directed by Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath. The film depicts the 10-year quest of co-director Sambath to find truth and closure in the Killing Fields of Cambodia. The film features interviews of former Khmer Rouge officials from the most senior surviving leader to the men and women who slit throats during the regime of Democratic Kampuchea between 1975 and 1979.
Notre Dame Cathedral, also known as the Cathedral of Phnom Penh, was a 19th-century French Gothic revival church that served as the cathedral of the Apostolic Vicariate of Phnom Penh. It was located in the Russei Keo District of the city on Monivong Boulevard.
The Missing Picture is a 2013 Cambodian-French documentary film directed by Rithy Panh about the Khmer Rouge. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where it won the top prize. It was also screened in the World Cinema section at the 2013 Cinemanila International Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize. It won the Lumières Award for Best Documentary at the 21st Lumières Awards and was nominated for the César Award for Best Documentary Film at the 41st César Awards as well as for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards.
Davy Chou is a Cambodian-French filmmaker. He has written, directed and produced several films. Chou made his feature length debut with Diamond Island (2016) and made his follow-up with the film Return to Seoul (2022).
Guillaume Suon is a French-Cambodian filmmaker.
Lida Chan is a Cambodian filmmaker.
Youk Chhang is the executive director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) and a survivor of the Khmer Rouge's killing fields. He became DC-Cam's leader in 1995, when the center was founded as a field office of Yale University’s Cambodian Genocide Program to conduct research, training and documentation relating to the Khmer Rouge regime. Chhang continued to run the center after its inception as an independent Cambodian non-governmental organization in 1997 and is currently building on DC-Cam's work to establish the Sleuk Rith Institute, a permanent hub for genocide studies in Asia, based in Phnom Penh.
The Bophana Center is an audiovisual center located in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The center is dedicated to restoring, protecting and enhancing the Cambodian audiovisual heritage.
Kambojika Putta Khemara Tarei is a dragon boat from Cambodia. The boat holds the Guinness record of being the longest dragon boat in the world. With an overall length of 87.3 metres (286 ft), in November 2018, the boat beat the previous record of 77.8 metres (255 ft) set by a Chinese dragon boat in May 2016. The boat was showcased during the 2018 Water Festival in Phnom Penh.
