In his 2012 documentary “The Act of Killing”, Danish director Joshua Oppenheimer stunned audiences with his bold approach (went far beyond traditional notions of killers and victims) to unmasking the perpetrators of the mid 1960s genocide in Indonesia. While that documentary film exposed the killers themselves, its companion piece “The Look of Silence” revisits the scenes of their crimes and follows one family among the hundreds of thousands in a quest for understanding as they attempt to confront the remaining murderers. A dangerous endeavor, because the killers are still in power and there has not been any official reconciliation process.
But this is no simple confrontational documentary told from a survivor’s point of view. In the director’s quietly concentrated second look at the generations affected, a young man, concerned about raising his own children in a society cowed into silence, tracks down his brother’s killers and tries to force them to see the past with fresh eyes. This is gripping, powerful, and overall essential stuff. “The Look of Silence” will available in Indonesian and Javanese language with English subtitles. It was screened in the official competition at the 71st Venice International Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize, the International Film Critics Award, the Italian online critics award, the European Film Critics Award, as well as the Human Rights Nights Award.