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The Act of Killing

  • 2012
  • Not Rated
  • 1h 57m
IMDb RATING
8.2/10
39K
YOUR RATING
The Act of Killing (2012)
A documentary that examines a country where death squad leaders are celebrated as heroes, challenging them to reenact their real-life mass killings in the style of the American movies they love.
Play trailer2:13
10 Videos
59 Photos
DocumentaryBiographyCrime

A documentary which challenges former Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish, including classic Hollywood crime scenarios and l... Read allA documentary which challenges former Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish, including classic Hollywood crime scenarios and lavish musical numbers.A documentary which challenges former Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish, including classic Hollywood crime scenarios and lavish musical numbers.

  • Directors
    • Joshua Oppenheimer
    • Anonymous
    • Christine Cynn
  • Stars
    • Anwar Congo
    • Herman Koto
    • Syamsul Arifin
  • See production, box office & company info
  • IMDb RATING
    8.2/10
    39K
    YOUR RATING
    • Directors
      • Joshua Oppenheimer
      • Anonymous
      • Christine Cynn
    • Stars
      • Anwar Congo
      • Herman Koto
      • Syamsul Arifin
    • 152User reviews
    • 251Critic reviews
    • 91Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 1 Oscar
      • 55 wins & 46 nominations total

    Videos10

    Theatrical Trailer
    Trailer 2:13
    Watch Theatrical Trailer
    The Act of Killing
    Trailer 2:13
    Watch The Act of Killing
    The Act Of Killing: Daytime Talk Show (Spanish Subtitled)
    Clip 3:18
    Watch The Act Of Killing: Daytime Talk Show (Spanish Subtitled)
    The Act Of Killing: Jeans
    Clip 1:09
    Watch The Act Of Killing: Jeans
    The Act Of Killing: On Set (Spanish Subtitled)
    Clip 3:12
    Watch The Act Of Killing: On Set (Spanish Subtitled)
    The Act Of Killing: Winner
    Clip 1:16
    Watch The Act Of Killing: Winner
    The Act Of Killing: Musical Sequence (Spanish Subtitled)
    Clip 2:07
    Watch The Act Of Killing: Musical Sequence (Spanish Subtitled)
    The Act Of Killing: Crazy
    Clip 0:56
    Watch The Act Of Killing: Crazy
    The Act Of Killing: Cruelty And Image
    Clip 2:10
    Watch The Act Of Killing: Cruelty And Image
    The Act Of Killing: Anwar On The Roof
    Clip 2:19
    Watch The Act Of Killing: Anwar On The Roof

    Photos59

    The Act of Killing (2012)
    Anwar Congo in The Act of Killing (2012)
    Anwar Congo in The Act of Killing (2012)
    Anwar Congo in The Act of Killing (2012)
    The Act of Killing (2012)
    The Act of Killing (2012)
    The Act of Killing (2012)
    The Act of Killing (2012)
    The Act of Killing (2012)
    The Act of Killing (2012)
    Anwar Congo in The Act of Killing (2012)
    Anwar Congo in The Act of Killing (2012)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Anwar Congo
    Anwar Congo
    • Self - Executioner in 1965
    Herman Koto
    Herman Koto
    • Self - Gangster and Paramilitary Leader
    Syamsul Arifin
    • Self - Governor of North Sumatra
    Ibrahim Sinik
    • Self - Newspaper Publisher
    Yapto Soerjosoemarno
    Yapto Soerjosoemarno
    • Self - Leader of Pancasila Youth
    Safit Pardede
    • Self - Local Paramilitary Leader
    Jusuf Kalla
    Jusuf Kalla
    • Self - Vice President of Indonesia
    Adi Zulkadry
    Adi Zulkadry
    • Self - Fellow Executioner in 1965
    Soaduon Siregar
    • Self - Journalist
    Suryono
    Suryono
    • Self - Anwar's Neighbor
    Haji Marzuki
    • Self - Member of North Sumatra Parliament
    • (as Marzuki)
    Haji Anif
    Haji Anif
    • Self - Paramilitary Leader and Businessman
    Rahmat Shah
    • Self - Member of Parliament
    Sakhyan Asmara
    • Self - Deputy Minister of Youth and Sport
    Barack Obama
    Barack Obama
    • Self
    • (archive footage)
    • (uncredited)
    • Directors
      • Joshua Oppenheimer
      • Anonymous
      • Christine Cynn
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The project started with a focus on the family of the victims, but many were arrested as Joshua Oppenheimer was doing the interviews with them. In that process he started meeting torturers, so he decided to refocus the story on them.
    • Quotes

      Anwar Congo: Did the people I tortured feel the way I do here? I can feel what the people I tortured felt. Because here my dignity has been destroyed, and then fear come, right there and then. All the terror suddenly possessed my body. It surrounded me, and possessed me.

      Joshua Oppenheimer: Actually, the people you tortured felt far worse, because you knew it's only a film. They knew they were being killed.

      Anwar Congo: But I can feel it, Josh. Really, I feel it. Or have I sinned. I did this to so many people, Josh. Is it all coming back to me? I really hope it won't. I don't want it to, Josh.

    • Crazy credits
      The name Anonymous appears 49 times under 27 different crew positions in the credits. This was done to protect the identities of those crew members who feared retribution from the former Indonesian death squad leaders.
    • Alternate versions
      The 115-minute version is generally the theatrical version. It was presented at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals. The 159-minute version competed at the CPH:DOX festival and won its main award. It is also the main version being released in Indonesia.
    • Connections
      Edited into P.O.V.: The Act of Killing (2014)
    • Soundtracks
      Theme for the Act of Killing
      Composer: Karsten Fundal

      Published by Edition Wilhlem Hansen

      Performed by Clara Bryld, Andreas Estrup, Frederik Teige, Katinka Fogh Vindelev

      Technician: Lars Falck

      Recording Studio: Copenhagen Studios

    User reviews152

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    The images create the viewer
    I had been looking forward to this since first hearing about it. The subject would be deep and strange. It had involvement by Herzog in a project that seemed worthy of him. So I made a point to see the authorial version of close to three hours, hoping to land in a broader swim that goes out in search.

    Kierkegaard said, "life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward". He means that life can only be made apparent in reflection but as you live it in the here and now it will be opaque. Conversely however, it means that if we hope to understand history in a significant way, so as to be able to recognize the forces at play in the here and now and not have to wait until later, we should try placing ourselves in it as something that was lived going forward.

    So by way of history that we can understand backward we learn little here. A military coup in Indonesia resulted in the persecution and death of perhaps up to a million people - that was with Vietnam already underway the same year and driven by the same strategy of containing communism and shady American involvement. But that's another story to tell.

    So how to begin to make sense in the here and now of a tragedy of unfathomable proportions? The filmmaker could have plainly presented a tapestry of facts and sought historians to explain larger swathes of context. It's not because he thinks the events will be fairly well known that he omits these, rather the whole point here is different.

    The film is not a historic record that only finds its impetus in the murderers; it's an examination of delusion and ignorance now in this life. Not the fact of murder so much as how individuals carry it with them. They are asked to re enact events, the re enactments played back to them so they're both makers and viewers. How do they see themselves in what they see of themselves? What form does the memory take and what does it mean to live through it after the fact?

    So these re enactments would be our focal point of entry into the self who lived through them, memory brought alive. Some of them are more fantastical than others. Some are just brutish and senseless, hemmed in by the brutish imagination of their makers. The most chilling thing however is that even the enactments of violent interrogation, in particular those, afford no realer apprehension; they look as banal as movie scenes.

    Which is to say that there's a certain kind of artifice here that stands in our way and the actual filmmaker can't shed away. Some will say he achieves this in the finale and perhaps he does. But there's another nagging sense for me.

    See, we follow two or three people, head executioners in their day, picked among dozens of others for the purpose of the film. It quickly becomes obvious why; they're each photogenic in their way, flamboyant and unabashed. It also becomes obvious that they think they're making a different sort of film, one that chronicles their exploits in a favored light. Not surprisingly; they have lived all their life within a state- sponsored narrative that sees events of that day as brave.

    Now one of them has managed to build around himself something akin to a worldview that lets him escape any guilt. Is any other country innocent of much the same? Another is just a Jack Black looking dufus probably as capable of the same now. But the third one looks like he might be awakening to a more vital realization, the one we would perhaps like him to.

    See, this is the whole thing. The film becomes about this man making the breakthrough to the kind of story we would like to see told, it's why the climax is reserved for him and not the one who is unrepentant. But this way have we penetrated artifice to get to the real stuff in a deep way? The scene where he retches in the same veranda where he garroted thousands, does it offer the realization we're after?

    Suddenly it feels as contrived as a dramatized version. See, the whole thing can't be bogged down to whether this man is feeling pangs of regret now, it can't be a concern that he is, unless you're willing to buy the notion that ignorance and delusion have been chased away from him and he's now cleansed. This simply isn't how I'm prepared to leave this behind. Truth, or ecstatic truth like Herzog's kind, is always something you sculpt and this isn't particularly well sculpted truth.

    What we learn about present day Indonesia was more chilling truth in its way. It becomes obvious that the political caste in power comes from much the same apparatus that exterminated people. A deputy minister openly hailing paramilitaries in a speech while wearing their jacket. A surreal TV talk show that would probably reach tens of millions of homes interviewing the murderers while the whole audience in attendance are paramilitaries. Everything here shows a deeply disturbing mentality that still gleams in the eyes of people.
    helpful•11
    3
    • chaos-rampant
    • Dec 1, 2015

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • November 8, 2012 (Denmark)
    • Countries of origin
      • United Kingdom
      • Denmark
      • Norway
    • Official sites
      • Official Facebook
      • Official site
    • Languages
      • Indonesian
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Акт вбивства
    • Filming locations
      • Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia(Exterior, Interview)
    • Production companies
      • Final Cut for Real
      • Piraya Film A/S
      • Novaya Zemlya
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $1,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $486,919
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $27,450
      • Jul 21, 2013
    • Gross worldwide
      • $726,324
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 57 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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