(Joshua Oppenheimer, Denmark/Indonesia/Norway/United Kingdom, 2012, 167 min., DCP)
Groundbreaking documentaries are one thing, but how many documentaries have reinvented the form? Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing did just that, in order to draw light onto a subject that is often ignored by the international community: the Indonesian genocide of 1965-66. Due to the government’s repression of their national history, many Indonesians today are not aware of the true nature of the crimes against humanity committed by the military regime, while paradoxically the perpetrators of these mass killings (“death squads”) are publicly celebrated. Oppenheimer takes an extensive look at the lives of these men and asks them to recreate their killings in the form of cinema. By recreating the act of killing, one of the perpetrators, Anwar Congo, comes to terms with what he has done. What results is a film that is just as disturbing as it is humanistic.
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