Jolie directs Netflix Cambodian original

Jolie Pitt will direct the film for Netflix

Hollywood actor and humanitarian Angelina Jolie Pitt is to direct a Netflix original film set in Cambodia.

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers is an adaptation of the memoir by Cambodian-American author Loung Ung, who survived the Khmer Rouge era in the country.

Ung and Jolie Pitt have co-adapted the memoir into a screenplay, with production beginning in Cambodia this year for a 2016 release.

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

Jolie Pitt’s Cambodian-born son, Maddox, will also be involved in the production of the film.

Rithy Panh, director of the Oscar-nominated The Missing Picture, will also produce the picture, which will be submitted to major international festivals.

Last month, Netflix partnered with Jolie Pitt’s husband, Brad Pitt, for satirical comedy movie War Machine about the war in Afghanistan.