'The Missing Picture' is the first Cambodian film to make it to Oscar night

Credit: Strand Releasing

Director Rithy Panh uses clay figurines to represent Cambodians in his Oscar-nominated film memoir "The Missing Picture," about his boyhood memories of living under the Khmer Rouge from 1974 to 1978. Panh lost almost every member of his immediate and extended family in the killing fields of Cambodia.

At the Academy Awards on Sunday, for the first time, a film from Cambodia is being considered for an Oscar.

"The Missing Picture," which is nominated in the foreign film category, explores the childhood memories of director Rithy Panh who spent four years living in the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge.Rithy was 11 when Khmer Rouge soldiers took over Cambodia in April 1975.