Brother Number One

2011 • 98 minutes

About this movie

"All prisoners that arrived must be interrogated, tortured and smashed. No exceptions", Duch explains to the ECCC War Crimes Court in Cambodia where he is on trial. In 1978 Kerry had been sailing with two other young men along the "hippie trail", popular among many of his generation. He was captured by Khmer Rouge officials after his boat strayed into Cambodian waters. After capture he was transferred to the prison Duch presided over, Tuol Sleng (S21), and tortured for two months before being executed. Rob, who was only 14 at the time, explains, "This is the story of an innocent man brought to his knees and killed in the prime of his life". Duch, now a born again Christian, was found working for World Vision in the border area between Cambodia and Thailand, where he fled with the Khmer Rouge twenty years before. One of the brightest young mathematicians in the country, he had been radicalised in college under Son Sen and soon found himself in charge of "the mother of all torture centres in Cambodia". Rob visits Tuol Sleng, where as one Cambodian points out, the treatment Kerry had was all part of the modus operandi. "As soon as you entered Tuol Sleng your fate was sealed. You'd be immediately photographed, put in a cell, tortured, and then told to write a series of ever-wilder confessions." Originally sentenced to 35 years in prison, then reduced to 19 and last year extended again to life imprisonment, Duch is the only one of the five high-ranking members of the Khmer Rouge regime who has recognised any of his crimes. Through this inspirational documentary Rob's voice joins that of millions of Cambodians in a plea for justice. "It's the same shrill cry from a Cambodian or a New Zealander... it is the cry of humanity."