Film Overview

This package includes:

One Director's Cut Version (74 min.) and
One Classroom Edition (57 min.)
Both are licensed for high school and community group use.

-Winner of 9 international awards including the Movies That Matter Award - an Amnesty International initiative, broadcast on national PBS and screened to sold out audiences from New York to Phnom Penh, NEW YEAR BABY tells a heart warming story of love, joy and pardon.

Born in a Thai refugee camp on Cambodian New Year, filmmaker Socheata Poeuv grew up in the United States deemed by her family “the lucky one,” fated to good fortune.

As a child in the United States, she knew that her parents had survived oppression and genocide under the Khmer Rouge, but they never spoke of it aloud

Twenty-five years later in the suburbs of Texas, her parents make a startling admission, and the impact of the Khmer Rouge suddenly becomes very real. Impelled to confront and give human face to her childhood shadows, Socheata travels to Cambodia to unravel the mystery shrouding her family’s survival and eventual escape. Her voyage parallels her family’s emotional journey through a series of revelations: unimaginable sacrifice; promises made and kept; the fierce and solemn love for those who were left behind, and finally, one long unsung hero, a “Cambodian cowboy,” is unveiled.

With disarming candor, humor and poetic animation Poeuv’s debut feature resurrects memory and personal history to reclaim her family’s past, and what is easily a heartbreaking story also becomes one of triumph. Winner of both audience and best documentary awards across the United States, NEW YEAR BABY is a testament to one father’s extraordinary bravery, and the love that binds a family together.

Refusing to allow this national tragedy to be erased from the collective memory of new generations, NEW YEAR BABY gives a voice to both familial memories and Cambodia's history, challenging the Khmer Rouge principle, "If you preserve secrecy, half the battle is won."