Angelina Jolie to direct Cambodia-set drama for Netflix

angelina jolie

On the heels of Brad Pitt’s latest project being bought by Netflix, his wife, Angelina Jolie Pitt, is now teaming with the internet-network giant for her next directing effort.

On Thursday, Netflix announced that Jolie Pitt will direct and produce an adaptation of “First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers,” a memoir from Cambodian author and human-rights activist Loung Ung.

The story recounts Ung going through the Khmer Rouge regime as a child in Cambodia, a four-year genocide in which two million Cambodians died. Ung was forced from her family’s home and went to a work camp where she trained as a child soldier. Her book was published in 2000.

Jolie Pitt contacted Ung over a decade ago about making a film about her experience and the two adapted a screenplay.

first they killed my father “I was deeply affected by Loung’s book,” Jolie Pitt said in the Netflix release. “It deepened forever my understanding of how children experience war and are affected by the emotional memory of it. And it helped me draw closer still to the people of Cambodia, my son’s homeland.”

Jolie Pitt has had a connection with Cambodia since visiting there while filming "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" in 2001.

She adopted her first child, Maddox Chivan, from an orphanage in Battambang, Cambodia, when he was 7 months old. Before that, she did humanitarian work in Cambodia and nearby regions.

Production on “First They Killed My Father” will begin later this year in Cambodia, according to the release.

Jolie Pitt is currently in postproduction on the drama “By The Sea,” which she wrote, directed, and starred in opposite her husband.

She is still planning to direct “Africa,” a passion project of hers on the work of paleo-anthropologist Dr. Richard Leakey and his decade-long fight to save Africa from the illegal-wildlife trade. According to the Netflix release, Jolie Pitt plans to take that on following production of “First They Killed My Father.”

unbroken movie Jolie Pitt’s previously released directorial effort, “Unbroken,” came out in 2014 and was nominated for three Oscars. The biopic on Olympian Louis Zamperini, who was also a prisoner-of-war during World War II, grossed $161,459,297 worldwide.