‘The Act of Killing’: Why killers restage their mass murders
The Act of Killing remains the rare documentary that hands the camera to the killers themselves, letting them restage Indonesia’s 1965-66 massacres in whatever film style they choose. Nearly fifteen years after its premiere, the film’s 2026 ranking as the top documentary of the twenty-first century by the International Documentary Association keeps the project squarely in the conversation. Its central question—what happens when perpetrators direct their own crimes for the screen—has lost none of its urgency.
Why the killers agreed
Director Joshua Oppenheimer approached more than forty death-squad veterans before finding willing participants. Anwar Congo and Herman Koto, once ticket scalpers turned executioners, saw an opportunity to star in the kind of Hollywood gangster pictures they loved. They arrived on set already versed in cinematic language, eager to prove their exploits deserved the same treatment as the movies.
The men treated the project like a prestige shoot, scouting locations and arguing over lighting. Their readiness revealed how impunity had hardened into routine; boasting on local television had long replaced any fear of prosecution. Oppenheimer’s invitation simply extended an existing performance.
Production notes show the crew operated under strict anonymity rules, with Indonesian collaborators credited only as “Anonymous.” That precaution underscored the continued social power of the killers, who still commanded respect in Medan decades after the killings.
Stylistic choices as confession
The reenactments toggle between film noir, Western showdowns, and Busby Berkeley musicals. Wire strangulation scenes mimic the bloodless technique Anwar once copied from gangster pictures. Each genre choice functions as both costume and alibi, letting the men frame murder as cinematic spectacle rather than state policy.
One lavish musical number features young women descending from clouds to crown the killers with flowers. The sequence plays as grotesque propaganda until Anwar watches the playback and registers the horror on the victims’ faces. The camera catches the moment the performance cracks.
By letting the perpetrators choose the frame, the film exposes how narrative itself becomes a tool of self-exoneration. The killers never needed outside direction; they already knew how to turn atrocity into entertainment.
Anwar’s unraveling on camera
Anwar begins the shoot as a charismatic host, demonstrating strangulation techniques with a length of wire. Midway through production, he pauses after a scene and asks whether the people he killed felt the nausea now rising in his own body. The question marks the first visible fracture in his public persona.
Subsequent takes grow shorter and more hesitant. Adi Zulkadry, another squad leader, remains unmoved and lectures Anwar on the political necessity of the killings. The contrast between the two men sharpens the film’s portrait of selective remorse.
The final sequence shows Anwar retching at the exact rooftop where he once executed prisoners. The image arrives without commentary, allowing the physical reaction to stand as its own evidence of belated recognition.
Indonesia’s culture of impunity
Official Indonesian history still celebrates the 1965-66 purge as a patriotic triumph. School textbooks omit victim counts, and surviving paramilitary groups continue to stage annual commemorations. The killers’ celebrity status made the reenactments possible; no legal barrier existed to stop them.
Local television had already turned Anwar into a minor celebrity, inviting him to recount body counts on talk shows. The film simply moved that performance from studio to location, preserving the same tone of unapologetic nostalgia.
Screenings inside Indonesia remain restricted, yet pirated copies circulate widely. University groups and human-rights organizations host private viewings, using the footage to prompt discussion where public debate is still censored.
The companion film’s counterpoint
Oppenheimer’s 2014 follow-up, The Look of Silence, shifts perspective to the victims’ families. Optometrist Adi confronts the men who murdered his brother, forcing them to reckon with faces they had never been required to meet. The pairing creates a diptych: one film records fantasy, the other records its aftermath.
Both projects were conceived after survivors approached Oppenheimer, asking him to document the killers’ boasts. The director’s decision to grant the perpetrators cinematic control was itself a response to that request, turning the camera into a mirror rather than a weapon.
Streaming numbers for both films spiked again in 2025 after the IDA ranking, suggesting renewed interest in how documentary form can address historical silence without resorting to conventional testimony.
Critical reception and awards trajectory
Early reviews praised the film’s formal audacity while questioning its ethics. A.O. Scott noted the unsettling pleasure of watching killers direct their own myth. The debate resurfaced during the 2026 IDA poll, when some critics argued the ranking risked aestheticizing atrocity.
Defenders countered that the film’s power lies precisely in denying viewers the comfort of moral distance. By refusing to cut away from Anwar’s nausea, the documentary withholds the catharsis usually supplied by perpetrator-focused narratives.
The project’s Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 2014 placed it alongside more conventional nonfiction entries, highlighting how rarely the Academy confronts films that withhold redemption arcs.
Influence on later nonfiction work
Subsequent documentaries have adopted similar strategies of giving subjects narrative agency, though few replicate the extreme premise. Recent projects on police violence and corporate malfeasance cite The Act of Killing as precedent for letting perpetrators script their own defense.
Film-school curricula now include the title in courses on ethics and reenactment, using Anwar’s arc to illustrate the limits of performance as confession. The film’s legacy rests less on stylistic imitation than on its insistence that form itself can be evidence.
Streaming platforms have added both films to curated collections on historical memory, pairing them with survivor testimonies from other conflicts. The placement keeps the Indonesian case visible within broader conversations about impunity.
Legal and political stasis
No Indonesian court has prosecuted the 1965-66 killings. Successive administrations have avoided formal acknowledgment, citing national stability. The killers remain free, their pensions intact and their stories unchallenged in official channels.
International human-rights groups continue to press for archival access and victim reparations. The Act of Killing supplies visual documentation that official records lack, yet its evidentiary value remains symbolic rather than judicial.
Recent diplomatic overtures between Jakarta and foreign governments have avoided the subject entirely, illustrating how cultural products can outpace political will.
What the film leaves unresolved
The documentary ends without trial, apology, or institutional change. Anwar’s physical revulsion registers as personal rather than collective reckoning. Viewers are left to decide whether that reaction constitutes progress or merely another performance.
The Look of Silence closes the loop by showing survivors still navigating the same neighborhoods as their brothers’ killers. The two films together map the geography of denial that persists long after any camera stops rolling.
Why the project still resonates
The Act of Killing demonstrates how societies built on unpunished violence absorb cinematic language to sanitize their origins. Its 2026 ranking affirms that the questions it poses about performance, memory, and justice have not been resolved by time or distance. The film continues to circulate because the conditions it documents remain intact.
