The Act of Killing

The Act of Killing is a documentary about the mass killings that followed the Indonesian military's seizure of power in 1965. Over the course of less than a year, more than a million people accused of communism, along with intellectuals and members of the ethnic Chinese minority, were killed by paramilitary groups and death squads. The perpetrators were never punished; decades later many of them remain powerful, and some are still celebrated. Among them is Anwar Congo, who rose from a small-time black-market ticket seller to lead a death squad in Medan, North Sumatra. Asked by the filmmakers to restage the killings he took part in, he throws himself into the task, recruiting performers and working on sets and costumes, and stages the violence in the styles of the film genres he loves, among them westerns, musicals and gangster pictures.

Joshua Oppenheimer directed, with Christine Cynn, and the film was produced by Cynn, Anne Köhncke and Signe Byrge Sørensen, made in the United Kingdom, Denmark and Norway on a budget of about one million dollars. It was Oppenheimer's first feature and was followed by The Look of Silence, The End and The Revolution Against Death. The cast are the participants themselves, appearing as themselves: Anwar Congo, Herman Koto, Syamsul Arifin, Ibrahim Sinik, Yapto Soerjosoemarno and Safit Pardede.

The film runs 159 minutes. Its critical rating stands at 8.8 out of 10 from 162 reviews, while on TMDB it holds 7.7 out of 10 from 788 votes, and on IMDb audiences have rated it highly as well.