Oregon Public Broadcasting

Ten years ago, Tat Marina was 16, a pretty rising star in the karaoke video scene in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. 

She was involved in a sexual relationship with a middle-aged man, who – she later learned – was in fact Cambodia’s Undersecretary of State: a man named Svay Sitha. 

In December of 1999, Cambodian police say Marina was attacked in a Phnom Penh market. 

She was thrown to the ground, knocked unconscious, and doused with nitric acid.

Tat Marina: “I felt something burning behind my neck through my back.  And I got up and there’s acid all over my body and my face,and I’m trying to look for who did that. I feel it burning, and I scream for help.  The acid was on my body, burning badly.  I couldn’t see, couldn’t open my eye.  And I thought I’m going to be blind.”

Marina was burned on more than 40 percent of her body. 

The burns were so deep on her face, her ears eventually had to be removed. 

According to witnesses, one of the perpetrators was Svay Sitha’s wife. 

Skye Fitzgerald

A warrant for her arrest was issued, but Cambodia’s culture of impunity has protected her and her powerful husband for ten years.

Portland filmmaker Skye Fitzgerald has documented Marina’s story in a new film called Finding Face. 

Fitzgerald says he and his collaborators were considering a film about acid attacks on women in general, but Marina’s story kept coming up in their research.

Tat Marina has had over two-dozen reconstructive surgeries on her face in the past ten years, most of them at Shriners Hospital in Boston, where she now lives. 

You can meet Marina and the filmmakers at a special screening, this Sunday evening at Portland Art Museum.