Documentary · History
Danish
2012 · Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer · 159 min
In Indonesia, the men who led the death squads of 1965-66 were never punished and still live as respected figures. Invited to stage scenes from their past in any film style they like, they choose gangster movies, westerns and musicals, and the camera keeps running.
Why it matters in cinema history
A landmark of the post-2000 documentary, it turned the reenactment from a way of illustrating the past into a way of examining the people who stage it. It stands beside Shoah and The Thin Blue Line in a lineage of documentary that challenges its own evidence.
Watch with intention
Watch it as a film about performance: how the men use costume, genre and audience to shape how they see themselves.
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