Loung Ung

Biography

Loung Ung is an author, activist, and co-screenplay writer of the critically acclaimed 2017 Netflix Original Movie, First They Killed My Father, which is based on her memoir and directed by Angelina Jolie. Born in 1970 in Phnom Penh, Loung was just five years old when Khmer Rouge soldiers forcibly evacuated her family from their home during a mass exodus. By 1978, the regime had taken the lives of her parents and two siblings. Orphaned and separated from her family, Loung was trained as a child soldier in a camp where she was indoctrinated with violence and hatred. In 1980, she and her elder brother fled to Thailand by boat, where they resided in a refugee camp for five months. Her debut memoir, the national bestseller First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (Harper Perennial), chronicles her experiences surviving the killing fields of Cambodia, one of the most brutal chapters of the twentieth century. Between 1975 and 1979, approximately two million Cambodians—out of a total population of seven million—perished under the notorious regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Of her family of nine, only four members survived. Loung’s poignant narrative, both harrowing and hopeful, serves as a powerful testament to a family that, despite being profoundly affected and fractured, was remarkably upheld by courage and love amidst unimaginable violence.