Pol Pot, born Saloth Sar, trained briefly as a Buddhist monk before turning to revolutionary politics and eventually leading Cambodia's Khmer Rouge. The film traces his rise to power in 1975, when his forces emptied Phnom Penh and other cities within days, marching the population into the countryside to build what Pol Pot called an agrarian utopia. Survivor testimony and expert analysis lay out how that vision became forced labor camps, starvation rations, and mass executions, killing an estimated two million people over roughly four years of Khmer Rouge rule. The documentary follows the mechanics of the regime: the abolition of money, religion, and family structures, the targeting of anyone with education or foreign ties, and the collapse of Cambodia's institutions under a leadership answerable to no one. It also places Pol Pot within the wider Cold War landscape that helped radical communist movements take hold across Southeast Asia. The film closes on the survivors themselves, whose accounts carry the story after the Khmer Rouge's fall from power.