Dith Pran (born 1942) became known to moviegoers in the West as his story was portrayed in The Killing Fields (1984). When the Communist forces of the Khmer Rouge took control of his homeland in 1975, Pran and his compatriots experienced almost unimaginable suffering. Four years later he was able to escape and ultimately become a crusader for justice in Cambodia.

As a guide and interpreter working with members of the United States media in his country during the early 1970s, Pran got to know New York Times journalist Sydney Schanberg. The two worked together, became close friends, and witnessed firsthand the horrors of the Cambodian government's war with the Khmer Rouge. Yet those horrors would be overshadowed by much greater ones that ensued when the Khmer Rouge took power in April of 1975. Schanberg would return to the U.S., where he earned a Pulitzer Prize for his work on Cambodia...