About the film

The Act of Killing's protagosnits are the Indonesian paramilitary leader Anwar Congo and his band of dedicated followers. In the 1960s, Anwar was a small-time gangster who sold movie tickets on the black market and found an idealized self-image in the gun slinging heroes on the screen. Coming out of the midnight show, he and his friends felt “just like gangsters who had stepped off the screen” and were enraged by the communists who boycotted American films – the most popular and profitable. When the government of President Sukarno was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar and his cohorts joined in the mass murder of more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese and intellectuals. Anwar and his friends take pride in their past and are eager to recreate it in the form of movie scenes with elaborate sets, costumes, pyrotechnics and extras enlisted to play victims. But as movie violence and real-life violence intertwine, Anwar's boastfulness gradually gives way to expressions of unease and regret. Unlike other nations where the perpetrators of genocide have been brought to justice or disgraced, in Indonesia the killers stayed in power, wrote their own triumphant history, and became role models for millions of young paramilitaries to this day. Co-director Joshua Oppenheimer has spent over a decade working with death squads and their victims, which comes through in his knowledge of and passionate investment in this subject. This is a film people will be talking about for years to come. “I have not come across a documentary as powerful, surreal, and frightening in a decade” wrote Werner Herzog after seeing an early preview of The Act of Killing, and both he and Errol Morris were impressed enough to sign on as executive producers.

Wybrane festiwale i nagrody / Selected festivals and awards: 2012 – MFF Toronto / Toronto IFF, 2012 – MFF Amsterdam / IDFA, 2012 – CPH:DOX Kopenhaga: Nagroda Główna / CPH:DOX Copenhagen: Grand Prix, 2013 – MFF Berlin: Nagroda Publiczności w sekcji Panorama, Nagroda Jury Ekumenicznego / Berlin IFF: Panorama Audience Award, Ecumenical Jury Prize, 2013 – FF Stambuł: Nagroda Tureckich Krytyków Filmowych / Istambul FF: Turkish Film Critics Award, 2013 – FF Meksyk: Nagroda Publiczności / FF Mexico City: Audience Award, 2013 – Zagrebdox: Nagroda Human Rights Prize/ Zagrebdox: Human Rights Prize, 2013 – Duńska Akademia Filmowa: Nagroda dla Najlepszego Filmu Dokumentalnego / Danish Film Academy: Best Documentary

Attend the meeting with Joshua Oppenheimer following the screening of director's cut of the film “The Act of Killing”. Warsaw, Saturday, May 11, Kinoteka.