Close Up

11 September 2016: The Look of Silence

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The Look of Silence
Joshua Oppenheimer
2014 | 103 min | Colour | DCP
Introduced by Andrea Luka Zimmerman

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.

Part of  our season on Joshua Oppenheimer