Angelina Jolie wants 'love and family' to come out of her new film on Cambodia's brutal past

— -- Angelina Jolie hopes the new film "First They Killed My Father," which she produced and directed, depicts the suffering, and resilience, of the people of Cambodia, "in a way that they deserve to be seen."

The film, debuting today on Netflix and in select theaters, is based on the 2000 memoir by Cambodian author Loung Ung, a survivor of the Pol Pot regime.

"For any country, it's important to understand ... your past," Jolie told ABC News' Juju Chang. "Cambodia has a beautiful, ancient, thousands-of-year-old, you know, glorious past, but also a past that is, has, war and genocide. And it's something that isn't spoken about."

Jolie said she thinks it was "really important" to open up a discussion about the darker aspects of the country's history.

"First They Killed My Father" is an unflinching account of the Cambodian genocide as told through the eyes of a child.

"I think people sometimes when they talk about genocide and crimes against humanity and war," Ung said. "They forget that the most vulnerable victims in all of this are the children."

Jolie, who previously directed the film "In the Land of Blood and Honey," which is set during the Bosnian War, said she makes war films in an effort to educate others, so that history does not repeat itself.

"I want to know how people get to a place where they do such harm to each other," Jolie said. "This is not 40 years ago. This is today. We have 45 million people displaced today. We have so many ongoing wars. We're seeing ethnic cleansing. We're seeing murder, death, starvation."

"What is worse is then, we could say, 'If we knew, if we knew ... we would have done so much,'" she said. "We know so much now ... It is something we must be very conscious of today."

Cambodia is also a country that is very close to Jolie's heart. She is a citizen of the southeast Asian nation, and her oldest son, Maddox Jolie-Pitt, was adopted from Cambodia.

Maddox Jolie-Pitt, 16, serves as an executive producer on the film. Jolie said that having her son connect with his home country and learn more about his identity is one of the most important things that came out of the making of this film.

"This wasn't as much about him becoming a filmmaker as him working with his countrymen," Jolie said. "When I see him on set working with everybody, and when he says to me, 'Well, Mom, it's because I'm Cambodian,' or ... something about 'my home,' or ... I say to him, 'are you proud?' And he says, 'I'm very proud to be Cambodian.'"

"That is him understanding who he is, and that's the most important thing ... that came out of this experience," Jolie said.

"I met Maddox and I felt ... I felt connected to the country," Jolie said. "I felt that I should be a family from that country ... when I saw his eyes, I knew."

Jolie said that if there is one thing she hopes fans take away from this film about the country it is "love and family," but "most of all, dignity."

"This is a country that deserves ... for people to know about its people in ... a way that they deserve to be seen," Jolie said.

On her health, life as a single mother: 'I'm very happy'

The Academy Award-winning actress made headlines earlier this year when she announced that she was separating from Brad Pitt, her husband of three years and the father to her six children.

When asked how director, actress, and humanitarian handles life as a single mother, she said it is something women around the world do everyday.

"It's kind of put that way as if it's something exceptional. There are women that are working three jobs and single mothers, and don't have the resources and don't have the support," Jolie said. "They're a marvel ... I'm not."

The actress also spoke out about her recent health battles earlier this year, discussing her struggles with hypertension and bells palsy.

Jolie said she is feeling "fine, right now."

"I'm very happy," she added. "My children are healthy, I'm healthy."