雖然製作成本來自歐洲，但此片把柬埔寨電影帶到國際影壇，成為該國第一部入選康城影展主競賽的作品。潘禮德首部劇情長片，故事講述一個貧苦的農民家庭，在父親去世後，掙扎求存。母親成為全家唯一的經濟支柱，壓力日漸磨滅她的意志。徘徊在精神崩潰的邊緣，母親最後亦逃不過家族的悲劇，痛苦的命運亦要一代傳一代。在赤柬時期目擊家人逐一死去的潘禮德，在迷人的畫面上譜出農村哀歌，奠定他日後作品的視覺風格，以及對柬埔寨國殤這個命題的執著。

While made entirely with European funds, Rice People is the one film which propelled Cambodian cinema to global attention. The first Cambodian film to make its bow at the Cannes Film Festival, Rithy Panh's first fictional feature is centred around a farming family whose impoverished lives were tipped further towards the precipice when the patriarch dies. Now solely responsible for the family's livelihood, the mother (played by the excellent Peng Phan) becomes increasingly agitated, her paranoia soon leading to a tragic confrontation with her seven daughters. A visually mesmerising account of the struggle for survival in Cambodia's rural hinterlands, Rice People consolidates Panh – whose family perished under the Khmer Rouge – as the chronicler of Cambodia's traumatised national psyche, a mission he continued all the way to the very present with films such as One Evening After the War and the Oscar-nominated The Missing Picture.