The Khmer Rouge wanted to destroy everything the West had ever touched. But the one thing they couldn't destroy was rock 'n' roll.

Revelling in the songs of the Beatles and the Bee Gees, in the 1960s young Cambodians built a wildly popular new type of pop that combined funk, soul and rock with the hypnotic rhythms of their own traditional music. But when the Khmer Rouge came, the musicians were the first against the wall, and most of what once existed was lost forever.

Don't Think I've Forgotten is filmmaker John Pirozzi's attempt to reclaim this unheard musical history from the grip of the genocide. Combining rare archival footage, never-before-heard recordings and interviews with the few surviving artists, this is an impossible-to-resist portrait of a music like no other – and the power of rock 'n' roll to save a nation's soul.

World Premiere
John Pirozzi is a festival guest.