What Remains: Returns, Representation, and Traumatic Memory in S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine and Refugee

This essay examines two documentaries—S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (dir. Rithy Panh, 2003) and Refugee (dir. Spencer Nakasako and Mike Siv, 2003)—featuring Cambodian and Cambodian American subjects whose subjectivity is centered squarely within the frame. Scenes of return and confrontation—between victims and perpetrators (S-21), between a son and his long-lost father (Refugee)—are unique to these films and are the essay’s main focus. I claim that these films perform both a testimonial and a pedagogical role, yet it is the silence in the works that is key. By returning to “what remains” time and again, the filmmakers, their subjects, and audiences are met by deep silences and ambivalence. I explore the unspoken moments and repeated gestures that are central to understanding these films. I argue that both the filmmakers and subjects of S-21 and Refugee are eternal melancholics; only the neoliberal, first-world audience is exempt from endless mourning. Challenging David Eng and David Kazanjian’s notions of loss as a productive space, I assert that these filmic subjects are melancholics unable to “successfully” mourn, whereas the spectators of these “trauma dramas’” are exempt.