The Look of Silence

Synopsis

The Look of Silence is Joshua Oppenheimer’s powerful companion piece to the Oscar®-nominated The Act of Killing. Through Oppenheimer’s footage of perpetrators of the 1965 Indonesian genocide, a family of survivors discovers how their son was murdered, as well as the identities of the killers. The documentary focuses on the youngest son, an optometrist named Adi, who decides to break the suffocating spell of submission and terror by doing something unimaginable in a society where the murderers remain in power: he confronts the men who killed his brother and, while testing their eyesight, asks them to accept responsibility for their actions. This unprecedented film initiates and bears witness to the collapse of fifty years of silence.

Director Biography

Joshua Oppenheimer is a documentary filmmaker and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow whose work explores the complex ethical and emotional ramifications of political violence. During the production of The Globalization Tapes, his 2003 documentary about labor practices in Sumatra, Oppenheimer began researching the massacres that followed Indonesian President Sukarno’s deposal in 1965. The resulting film, The Act of Killing (SFIFF 2013), won more than 70 awards and landed atop Sight and Sound’s poll of the best films of 2013.