Screened as part of NZIFF 2015

The Look of Silence 2015

Senyap

Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer Framing Reality

Joshua Oppenheimer follows his extraordinary The Act of Killing with an equally revelatory documentary in which boastful perpetrators of Indonesia’s 1965 massacres are confronted by the brother of one of their victims.

Aug 26

Lido Hamilton

Aug 27

Lido Hamilton

Denmark / Indonesia In Indonesian and Javanese with English subtitles
99 minutes DCP

Co-director

Anonymous

Producer

Signe Byrge Sørensen

Executive producers

Werner Herzog
,
Errol Morris
,
André Singer

Photography

Lars Skree

Editor

Niels Pagh Andersen

Music

Seri Banang
,
Mana Tahan

Awards

FIPRESCI Prize, Venice International Film Festival 2014
,
CPH:DOX Award, CPH:DOX 2014
,
Audience Award, SXSW Film Festival 2015

Festivals

Venice
,
Toronto
,
New York
,
Busan
,
CPH:DOX 2014; Berlin
,
SXSW
,
San Francisco 2015

“Joshua Oppenheimer’s groundbreaking documentary The Act of Killing confronted viewers with a moral vacuum in which the perpetrators of the politically motivated massacres that roiled Indonesia in 1965 were only too happy to reenact their crimes. In the director’s own words, ‘I felt I’d wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust, only to find the Nazis still in power.’ The Look of Silence widens the frame to include the victims’ perspective. Less a sequel than a companion piece, the film follows gentle optometrist Adi as he asks the killers about their crimes – among them, the vicious murder of his elder brother.

The interviewees insist that ‘the past is past’, and yet it’s only too clear that the lack of accountability leaves the threat intact: one former killer darkly intimates that Adi’s actions could be understood as communist activity, while another – a legislator no less – is even more explicit in promising that further questioning will prompt more killing. Oppenheimer continues to test the limits of observational documentary in his aesthetic interpretation of trauma. A startling and grave work sure to be discussed for years to come, The Look of Silence bears witness to the intolerable absence of truth and reconciliation.” — Max Goldberg, San Francisco International Film Festival

“When the end credits roll, and you notice most of the crew’s names are listed as ‘anonymous’, the threat seems fresh and immediate… This is an essential companion piece to Oppenheimer’s earlier film; another astonishing heart-of-darkness voyage into the jungle of human nature.” — Robbie Collin, The Telegraph