The Act of Killing (Director's Cut)

The director's cut of the film is the full culmination of Oppenheimer's seven-year journey making The Act of Killing. It is at once broader and deeper than the shorter versions. It explores the role of propaganda cinema in maintaining anti-communist fervor - and in soothing the killers' conscience. It reveals more of his unique filmmaking method. More importantly, the enormity of the story unfolds to a more intimate rhythm, giving us more time to get close to the characters, to be immersed in the experience and world of the film. We have have time to get lost with the characters in their evolving nightmares, which grow to embody the horror of living with the stain of mass murder. The fiction scenes take over the film's form, unmooring it and sending it spiralling into a surreal fever dream. Anwar Congo and his friends have been dancing their way through musical numbers, twisting arms in film noir gangster scenes, and galloping across prairies as yodelling cowboys. Their foray into filmmaking is being celebrated in the media and debated on television, even though Anwar Congo and his friends are mass murderers. Medan, Indonesia. When the government of Indonesia was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar and his friends were promoted from small-time gangsters who sold movie theatre tickets on the black market to death squad leaders. They helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese, and intellectuals in less than a year. As the executioner for the most notorious death squad in his city, Anwar himself killed hundreds of people with his own hands. The Act Of Killing is a journey into the memories and imaginations of the perpetrators, offering insight into the minds of mass killers. The film is a nightmarish vision of a frighteningly banal culture of impunity in which killers can joke about crimes against humanity on television chat shows, and celebrate moral disaster with the ease and grace of a soft shoe dance number. 2012 Final Cut For Real APS, Piraya Film AS and Novaya Zemlya Ltd, Dogwoof.