The Look of Silence
The Look of Silence is a 2014 internationally co-produced documentary film directed by Joshua Oppenheimer about the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66. The film is a companion piece to his 2012 documentary The Act of Killing. Executive producers were Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, and Andre Singer. It was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature">European Film Award for Best Documentary">Best Documentary Feature at the 88th Academy Awards.
Overview
Adi Rukun, a middle-aged Indonesian optometrist, has lived his whole life in an environment shaped by the unending grief his parents feel over the brutal murder of his older brother in the 1965 Indonesian Communist Purge, which occurred two years before Adi's birth. He watches extra footage from Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing project, which includes video of the men who killed his brother, and decides to visit and interview some of the killers and their collaborators—which turn out to include his uncle—while testing their eyesight. Although none of the killers expresses any remorse, the daughter of one of them is clearly shaken when she hears, apparently for the first time, the details of the killings. Interspersed between the confrontations are scenes of Adi's elderly mother and almost deaf and blind father.Out of concern for their safety, many members of the film's Indonesian crew are credited only as "Anonymous".
Release
The film was screened in the official competition at the 71st Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize, the International Film Critics Award, the Italian online critics award, the European Film Critics Award, as well as the Human Rights Nights Award. Since then, it has gone on to win multiple awards, including Best World Documentary at the Busan International Film Festival, the Grand Prize at CPH:DOX, the prize for Best Documentary at the Starz Denver Film Festival, a Danish Arts Council Award for outstanding achievement in filmmaking, and the Best Film Award at the One World human rights documentary film festival.On 10 December 2014, International Human Rights Day, there were 480 public screenings of the film across Indonesia, including a premiere screening in Jakarta attended by 2000 people. The screenings of the film in Indonesia has been sponsored by the National Human Rights Commission of Indonesia and the Jakarta Arts Council.
It was selected for screening in the Berlinale Special Galas section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2015.
In February 2016, Oppenheimer, along with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, screened the film for members of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and their House counterparts, officials from the Department of State, and members of the White House National Security Council staff. Oppenheimer hoped the Oscar buzz the film was generating would pressure the US government to formally acknowledge its collusion in the killings.
After its theatrical release, the film aired on US television as part of the PBS series POV.