Funan

Growing up in France, animator Denis Do enjoyed a childhood far from the hardships of life in Cambodia, yet like many children of refugees he was still impacted by the tragedy from which his mother had fled. Other children enjoyed visits from their grandparents; his were lost. if he didn't want to finish his dinner, he was told he should feel guilty, should think about what it was like to starve. It was an experience that made him resentful until, eventually, he travelled to the old country and began to understand the reality of what had happened under the Khmer Rouge. Out of that experience came this award-winning film.

Do has been quick to stress that this is a personal story, loosely based on what happened to his mother and what other relatives told him. It doesn't try to provide any wider perspective on the political ideas that drove the regime or the military conflicts along the country's borders - viewers who want that should look elsewhere, and might benefit from doing so before they watch this film. If you come to it with no prior knowledge, however, you'll still find it an involving story of survival and loss.

It centres on Chou (voiced by Bérénice Bejo), a young woman who is separated from her infant son when their family is forced to leave their home and march for miles to the re-education camps where they are them held captive. Told that the boy is alive in another camp and that she will be permitted to see him again if she proves to be a good and loyal worker, she keeps her head down and tries hard to do as she is told, but as increasing horrors unfold around her - not least the gradual realisation that the new farming system isn't working and, with food running out, there's no sign of relief supplies - the promised reunion is postponed over and over again. Meanwhile, her husband is going to increasingly desperate lengths to keep them alive, many people are secretly plotting escape, and - unknown to her - her son is being prepared for a future as a child soldier.

Simple animation techniques depict a world in which the pursuit of simplicity, of an imagined innocence, was pursued with psychotic zeal. Do employs a limited colour palette which unfussily demonstrates the depletion of the family's familiar environment, a return to nature that leaves room for little more than inedible vegetation, dirt and human decay. Only in looking to the sky can we find beauty. If anything, he downplays the horrors of the camps, favouring a more accessible approach that won't overwhelm the viewer. It's during the film's final half hour, when Chou finally flees in search of her child, that the tension mounts and the emotional power of the film really kicks in.

In recent years there have been several strong films on this subject. Funan has little to say that hasn't been said before, but uses animation well to deliver a different perspective. It's Do's tribute to the mother who raised him, perhaps an apology for the way he behaved when he didn't understand, and it's a melancholy contribution to an important cinematic reckoning. As with every atrocity on this scale, there are things about it that will never be understood by those who were not caught up in it directly, but Do's work brings us a little closer and promises that as the survivors grow old their stories will not fade into silence.