After a near-disappearance during the Khmer Rouge regime, competition from video and television has meant that the Cambodian film industry is a small one.
[6] Pos Keng Kang, a Khmer Horror period,[clarification needed] was a big hit in Thailand, and Crocodile Man (1974) was screened successfully in Hong Kong.
Such successes opened the way for foreign screenings of Khmer films such as Puthisean Neang Kong rey and The Snake Girl.
Stars during this era included actress Vichara Dany, who made hundreds of films but lost her life during the Khmer Rouge regime.
[4] The star of Pos Keng Kang, actress Dy Saveth, escaped Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge rule.
A leading man of the era was action star Chea Yuthon, and his mistress Saom Vansodany was a famous actress of the sixties and seventies.
Their son Thorn Tharith made an autobiographical drama, Chheam Anatha (The Blood of An Orphan), about the family's struggles during the Khmer Rouge time.
Cambodian production companies began to re-emerge and tread the fine line of making films that would entertain people without incurring the wrath of the government.
The boom in filmmaking was curtailed, however, by the introduction of VCRs, video cameras and importation of taped foreign television programs, including Thai soap operas.
One sign of progress is the career of French-trained director Rithy Panh, who escaped Cambodia after seeing his family die under the Khmer Rouge.
In 2001, Fai Sam Ang directed Kon pous keng kang (The Snake King's Child), a remake of a classic 1960s Cambodian film.
The trophy for best movie went to The Crocodile, a tale of the heroism of a man who killed the beast responsible for the deaths of several people in his village.
Other recent films include Tum Teav, a 16th- and 18th-century Cambodian folktale, and A Mother's Heart and Who Am I?, both by Pan Phuong Bopha, one of the first working female writer-directors in Cambodia.
[10] Another notable female Cambodian director is Lida Chan, who specializes in films and documentaries about the Khmer Rouge, and achieved success in 2012 with the award-winning Red Wedding.
[12] Cambodia's Angkor Wat was the location for the filming of 1965's Lord Jim, starring Peter O'Toole, but it was not until the early 21st century that foreign filmmakers made their return to the country.
The best-known depiction of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge years, The Killing Fields (1984), starring the Cambodian actor Haing S. Ngor as journalist Dith Pran, was in fact made in neighboring Thailand.
The 2001 action blockbuster Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was shot on location around Angkor, and its star, Angelina Jolie, became so enamored of the country that she adopted a Cambodian boy named Maddox and lived there for a time.
Matt Dillon's 2002 drama, City of Ghosts, was filmed in many locations around the country, including Phnom Penh and the Bokor Hill Station.
Since 2009, the Cambodia Film Commission has set up a training program to allow foreign productions to work with a local crew familiar with international standards.
In 2016, Angelina Jolie directed First They Killed My Father, adapted from Lung Ung's book's memory of the Khmer Rouge Era.
In recent years, horror films made on a low budget with weak special effects have become popular, especially with young audiences.
Some are similar to slasher films, involving a creature or a killer who stalks and graphically murders a series of mostly adolescent victims in a typically random, unprovoked fashion, killing many within a single night.
Despite the current taste for horror movies, Heng Tola believes a more serious trend is emerging, prompted in part by the resentment many Cambodians feel about its colonial past and toward powerful neighbors such as Thailand and Vietnam.
Poor enforcement of intellectual property in Cambodia also continues to impact the country's credibility in the local and international media trade.