The Act of Killing

In The Act of Killing, coming to theaters July 19^th, documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer adopts a novel approach to documenting death squad atrocities. He challenges Anwar Congo and other leaders of Indonesia’s Pancasila Youth paramilitary movement, who were behind the 1965-66 mass murders, to reenact the mass killings in the style of the American movies they love. They do so with childlike boastfulness of a kindergarten playground brawl, which conflicts violently with the memory of the actual murders that continue to terrorize survivors into silence. By inhabiting once again the moral vacuum that permits such brutalities to occur, be it in Indonesia or Iraq, the killers, and the audience, are forced to confront our celebratory glee in destroying those we deem to be “the other.”