The film centers on a young French widow and her two adolescent children as they attempt to carve out a meager life for themselves by farming rice fields alongside the ocean in French Indo-China in the 1930s. Their efforts are hampered each year by the presence of the sea, which invariably floods the fields with saltwater and wipes out the crops. In desperation, the mother realizes that their only hope lies in the construction of a sea wall to prevent continued flooding, but the mother must cut a swath through the local bureaucracy in an almost Sisyphean attempt to make this happen. Meanwhile, her obstinate daughter, Suzanne, draws the romantic obsessions of a well-to-do Chinese gentleman, Monsieur Jo. Though he could easily provide a way out, the possibility of a romantic relationship between Jo and Suzanne could just as easily fall prey to local racial prejudices that would damage or ruin the lives of both.

Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia's Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979.

Exil is a visionary narration of the exile of Cambodians during the Red Khmer regime, during which the country was renamed Democratic Kampuchea.

Camille, a young lady who has joined a Catholic mission in Cambodia and is ready to take her vows, crosses paths along a river and the Angkor ruins with a Cambodian man, Sambath, on a regular basis.

After The Missing Picture (Un Certain Regard winner 2013 and Oscar nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film in 2013) and Exile, Rithy Panh continues his personal and spiritual exploration. S21 the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine and Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell analyzed the mechanisms of the crime. Graves Without a Name searches for a path to peace. When a thirteen-year-old child, who lost the greater part of his family under the Khmer rouge, embarks on a search for their graves, whether clay or on spiritual ground, what does he find there? And above all, what is he looking for? Spectral trees? Villages defaced beyond recognition? Witnesses who are reluctant to speak? The ethereal touch of a brother or sister’s body as the night approaches? A cinematic movie that reaches well beyond the story of a country for that which is universal.