The Killing Fields

The Killing Fields (1984) is Roland Joffé's war drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It draws on what reporter Sydney Schanberg lived through in Cambodia as the country fell apart around him.

Schanberg has come to file stories for the New York Times, and he works hand in hand with a local interpreter, Dith Pran, without whom none of the reporting happens. As Americans scramble out of Phnom Penh, Pran is offered a seat on the flight with his family. He sends them ahead and stays behind with Sydney. From there his path splits sharply from his friend's: a foreign passport buys an exit, while a local man is left to the labor camps of the country's new rulers. Sam Waterston plays Schanberg; Haing S. Ngor, who survived this same horror before stepping in front of a camera, plays Pran.

Shot somewhere between reportage and epic cinema, the film took home three Academy Awards, one of them for first-time actor Ngor. The reunion of the two friends, set to John Lennon's Imagine, became one of the decade's most quoted closing scenes. Stream The Killing Fields (1984) online on iFILM.