Angelina Jolie Pitt to direct Netflix war drama ‘First They Killed My Father’

Angelina Jolie Pitt is the latest big name to team up with Netflix to make an original feature film.

The actress-turned-director will helm an adaptation of “First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers,” Loung Ung’s memoir about surviving the deadly Khmer Rouge regime, Netflix announced Thursday.

Published in 2000, “First They Killed My Father” recounts how Ung endured a four-year reign of terror and genocide, during which she was torn from her family and trained as a child soldier. Jolie Pitt, who read the book and befriended Ung more than a decade ago, worked with her to co-write the screenplay.

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The film will hit the streaming service in late 2016 and be submitted to major festivals.

In teaming up with Netflix, which has been shoring up its filmmaking efforts of late, Jolie Pitt joins husband Brad Pitt (“War Machine”), Cary Fukunaga (“Beasts of No Nation”) and Judd Apatow (“Pee-wee’s Big Holiday”), among others.

Jolie Pitt has a personal connection to Cambodia — it’s the homeland of her son Maddox, who will be involved in the production of the film — and she has demonstrated a penchant for tackling weighty dramas as a filmmaker.

Her first feature as a director, “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” was set against he backdrop of the Bosnian war, and her second, “Unbroken,” told the story of of Olympian and World War II POW survivor Louis Zamperini.

Jolie Pitt is currently in post-production on her third directorial effort, “By the Sea,” and will begin production on “First They Killed My Father” this year.

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