Talking to Joshua Oppenheimer about his devastating follow-up to The Act of ... - The Verge
When Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing came out in the summer of 2013, few had seen anything like it. In 2002, Oppenheimer set out to chronicle the victims of Indonesia’s brutal regime change, which took place in 1965 and 1966. The coup... Suharto spearheaded a national campaign to purge itself of Communists that resulted in one of the grizzliest genocides of the 20th century: suspected sympathizers were gutted, beheaded, and sexually mutilated. What Oppenheimer discovered was that not only were many of the perpetrators still in power 50 years later — individuals who freely boast of slaughtering hundreds — but they were championed as national heroes. So Oppenheimer pivoted toward the killers, casting them to recreate their deeds in a Hollywood-style film. It was an unorthodox conceit, but for the first time in half a century the killers were forced to confront their own crimes in a perverse sort of play therapy. With The Look of Silence , Oppenheimer turns his gaze back to his original subjects: the survivors living in a country where killers rule with impunity. The central character in The Look of Silence is Adi, an optometrist whose work naturally brings him to the homes of the elderly — perpetrators, victims, and relatives of both. Source: www.theverge.com
