The Netflix film “First They Killed My Father,” which is slated to screen at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, is a thriller that chronicles the journey of a childhood survivor of the Pol Pot regime during the Khmer Rouge years in Cambodia.

“Her eyes … never forget,” title pages flash across the screen in the trailer. Meanwhile, shots of children chanting and loading ammunition set the stage for a harrowing tale. One of the final images in the trailer shows the main actress, Srey Moch, watching buildings engulfed in flames.

The story is based on the memoir of the same name by Loung Ung, who shares a writing credit on the film with Jolie.

Controversy regarding the film’s casting process arose when Jolie was quoted in a Vanity Fair cover story saying that in order to cast the film, they places money in front of children and then took it away as a test. “I am upset that a pretend exercise in an improvisation, from an actual scene in the film, has been written about as if it was a real scenario,” Jolie later commented. “The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting. I would be outraged myself if this had happened.”

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