柬埔寨電影先驅YvonHem年輕時已經用16毫米拍攝家庭電影，之後更在法國導演馬塞爾卡繆的柬埔寨製作《BirdsofParadise》中擔任製作助理。他於1962年成立自己的製作公司，出產了十多套賣座電影。可是，赤柬掌權後，電影製作被視為「資產階級」的活動，而在1975年遭到全面禁止。當赤柬在1979年被推翻後，Hem回到金邊，在被戰火破壞的家園中，撿拾殘餘的攝影器材。《赤柬黑夜》就是在這灰燼中重生的成果。以劇情片的手法，道出一個家庭在勞改營內的遭遇。作為後赤柬年代的第一部長片，其忠奸分明的通俗劇風格，日後在柬埔寨成為主流。

A pioneer in Cambodian cinema, Yvon Hem made home movies with a 16mm camera in his youth and worked on Marcel Camus's Cambodia-set Birds of Paradise in 1962 before delivering a dozen hit features. Then came the Khmer Rouge, and out went the "bourgeois" act of filmmaking: he returned to Phnom Penh in 1979, scavenged parts on the streets to construct a camera, and finally produced Shadow Of Darkness in 1987. A fictionalised account of the brutal oppression experienced by a family living in a labour camp headed by malicious cadres, the film was the first feature to be made in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. Heavy on malevolent melodrama, the film heralds the style that would again become commonplace in mainstream Cambodian cinema in the years to come..