The actress and 'First They Killed My Father' director hopes to go before the cameras in the next few months.
5:34 PM PDT 9/3/2017
by
Stephen Galloway
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 Luong 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.
Luong, where are you from in Cambodia?
LUONG 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 Luong'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 Luong, met with
the UNHCR (The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees), the refugee agency I work with. So I've been working there
for over 14 years and we have this foundation, where we look after
60,000 hectares and many schools – the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation;
it's schools, maternal health, clinics, many, many things. So years into
that, I was granted citizenship as a humanitarian.
Why did you want it?
JOLIE: It was offered to me.
I'm sure lots of countries would happily offer you it.
JOLIE: [Laughs.] Cambodia made me a mother. Maddox – that's the
beginning of my family: Mad and I coming together was the beginning of
so much. So I feel so connected to this country, and I was really
honored and wanted to do great things for the country, and work in an
even deeper way.
How old was Maddox when you got him?
JOLIE: He was three months old when I met him and he's 16 now.
Does he speak Khmer? Do you?
I speak very little. Funnily enough, Shiloh speaks the most, my
middle girl, born in Namibia. My kids are from different countries, but
there's an understanding, you don't have to like a country just because
you were born in it. You need to respect all countries. And be very open
to each other's, of course. Mad is very proud to be Cambodian; he loves
languages. He's actually focused on German, Russian, Korean and French –
he's a linguist. He speaks a little Khmer, but I'm not forcing it. It's
very important that he does as much as he wanted to do and that he
loves it naturally. He was the one who said he wanted us to make the
film. We'd had the script for a few years. We said, "When you're ready –
because you're going to have to work with us – go deep, research, be
there.
He's a producer on the film, right?
JOLIE: Yes. So I said: "I'm ready to do this when you're ready. We're
going to go deep into your country's history. You're going to work with
your fellow countrymen and learn and love. This is going to be very
immersive and I need you to be ready to understand what this all means."
One day he told me he was ready, and so I called Luong. My other son is
Vietnamese, Pax. Very different. Very complex history, the two
countries. There's a scene in the movie where one side of the river is
Vietnamese and the other Cambodian and they're shooting at each other.
To have both my boys on set! It wasn't lost on us.
You spoke of Luong yesterday at a panel where you defended
the value of immigrants. What do you think of the Trump Administration's
attempts to curtail that?
JOLIE: It's very important that people understand that for refugees
to come into this country is very difficult, it takes a very long time.
It is less than one percent [of applicants who get in]; so to get
approved, to get even that close, is so much more complex than
oftentimes politicians like to make it sound. And people who are
refugees are fleeing war and persecution; they're not coming because
they just want to be in another country; they want to be home, in fact;
they don't want to have to leave their home. What upsets me about the
whole situation is that people don't know the difference between a
migrant and a refugee; they don't have respect for what people are
coming from — the people who against it — and they have completely
forgotten this is what built our country, the diversity. When it is put
forward that masses of people are dangerous, and the actual numbers and
the situation are proven to be completely the opposite of the way
they're presented publicly, it's horrible. I know these people. I've met
families in the pipeline, on the way here; I've met the refugees in the
camp who've been waiting – the average stay in a refugee camp is 16
years. We have 65 million people displaced — and I'm not somebody who
believes the answer is to cross a border. But until we get ourselves
together and we can work internationally to end conflict, to use
diplomacy to change the world we live in – and climate is now affecting
that – the reality of people needing safety in other countries is
something we need to understand. This is the world we live in.
Are you going to become active addressing what Trump wants to do?
JOLIE: I'm not going to say how, specifically, but I will continue to
speak out about human rights and freedoms. Absolutely. We can speak out
about what we are angry about, but the most important thing is to try
and help people understand the reality and not be blinded by something
that is not the truth. So I want people to meet Luong. She is the Syrian
girl right now who is trying to get support. She has contributed so
much to America, and that narrative needs to change. So I will continue
to try and change that narrative.
Luong, what's your perspective on this?
UNG: I am grateful to be assisted by an American population that's
generous and kind and compassionate. There are so many Americans who get
that. When my family arrived in America, [they] showed us how to ride
the bus and where to buy rice — where it was hard to find rice!
JOLIE: Tell him about the Fourth of July.
LUONG: We landed in America in June 1980. The church group that
sponsored us wanted to share the next big American party. They took us
to a Fourth of July fireworks. The only thing that was comparable for me
was war and landmines and dead people, and the first explosion, I was
so terrified, I was trying to run and hide under a bench. I had complete
belief war had crossed into America, that the soldiers had come in, and
I could not comprehend why people were standing around and applauding.
JOLIE: Think of how many people that must happen to. To us, it's normal.
Was it a difficult film to get off the ground, and an expensive one?
JOLIE: Early 20s [million [dollars]. We found an amazing partner in
Ted Sarandos and Netflix. And I was able to support it. I didn't receive
anything and anything I put back in.
You got no money, basically?
JOLIE [Laughs] No. The hard thing was, how do you do this in a
country where she had death threats when she wrote her first book? How
do you take this to a country that doesn't speak of it, where many
people say this didn't happen? It's a very, very complex country that's
still fighting for those voices, those human rights. To go in and
recreate on the soil where this happened, these horrors, and to shed
light on this war at every turn, would the country accept it? Are they
ready to tell it? Would the government give us permits?
Did they?
JOLIE: Yes.
What do you think of the prime minister and the current government?
JOLIE [long silence] I'm somebody who works within Cambodia, with
Cambodians. I work alongside the artists and society to work from
within, so that is the focus, and from that I hope everybody who
believes in democracy, in certain freedoms, will get louder, will grow
their voices.
Can they?
JOLIE: It's difficult. Which is why we didn't think we'd be able to get this movie made.
Have you met the prime minister, Hun Sen?
JOLIE: I live there and work there. I [spent] about four months there
on the film. I have a project about 100 people we work with.
Is your plan now to give up acting and direct?
JOLIE: Right now, I don't have anything to direct that I feel
passionate about like this, so I'll do some acting. I've taken over a
year off now, because of my family situation, to take care of my kids.
Is that resolved?
JOLIE: When they can have – when I feel it's time for me to go back
to work, I'll be able to go back to work. I've been needed at home. I
hope [to work again] in the months to come.
What will you do next?
JOLIE:
Maleficent, we're working on, most likely. And I look forward to having some fun with that.
Cleopatra, there is a script. There's a lot of different things floating around. But I haven't committed.
But you're planning to act and not move into directing?
JOLIE: I would love to at some point. At some point, I'll probably
just direct. If I'm allowed to. But you just don't know if you can have a
career as a director. You don't know how things are going to be
received.
Will your film qualify for the foreign-language Oscar?
JOLIE: I believe it will qualify, yes. It's just, will they choose us? Will we be the country's selection? We don't know.
