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Netflix’s Most Chilling Docu Yet? The Look Of Silence Will Leave You Shaken(Photo Credit –Netflix)

Joshua Oppenheimer’s 2014 documentary The Look of Silence on Netflix retells a chapter of Indonesia’s infamous history, and it pulls viewers into its haunting aftermath. The film, with an overwhelming Rotten Tomatoes score of 96 per cent, has left audiences shaken, not because of any dramatic embellishment, but because of its raw confrontation with a national wound that never really healed.

The Genocide: A Legacy Of Blood, Unspoken But Unforgotten

According to The Mirror, the film, which is set decades after the 1965–1966 mass killings in Indonesia, exposes the fallout from a campaign that targeted communists, union members, and supposed leftist sympathisers. What soon followed was the execution of hundreds of thousands, possibly up to a million, and a culture of silence and fear that gripped the nation for generations.

The documentary revolves around Adi Rukun,...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday..

This past weekend saw the release of “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda,” the latest in a recent string of impressively strong and commercially successful biographical documentaries (other recent standouts include “Rbg” and “Won’t You Be my Neighbor?”).

This week’s question: What is the best biographical documentary ever made?

Siddhant Adlakha (@SidizenKane), Freelance for The Village Voice, /Film



The best and arguably most important documentaries ever made are complimentary pieces by Joshua Oppenheimer, “The Act of Killing” (2013) and “The Look of Silence (2015). They’re set against the backdrop of Indonesia’s 1965-66 genocide, believed to be sponsored by the C.I.A., but they’re each rooted in the lives of singular subjects and their diametrically opposed journeys.

The cleansing, of an estimated three million ethnic Chinese, changed the face of the nation in terrifying ways,...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film and TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: This past Friday saw the release of Raoul Peck’s “I Am Not Your Negro,” a documentary that speaks to our present moment through the writings and actions of the late James Baldwin. What other documentaries — recent or not — might help people better understand and / or respond to the state of the world today?

Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow), The New Yorker

“The state of the world today” is too big a matter for any one documentary, because there’s no one state of things, there’s an overwhelming diversity of experiences — and the history of movies is as much the history of the ones that it doesn’t show.

Piercing insights into the minds of murderers, and then astonishing generosity from those left behind. Deeply despairing, then restores a bit of hope. I’m “biast” (pro): nothing

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

A couple of years ago, American filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer burst onto the documentary scene with his chilling portrait of the proud perpetrators of Indonesia’s 1965 genocide, who, after a military coup, slaughtered one million of their fellow countrymen on the pretense that they were communists. The subject matter was shocking enough: Oppenheimer put those killers on camera to talk about what they had done, and they were delighted to relate their story, their “this is who we are,” because they are still in power. The Nazis won this war: these are the very bad villains who get to write history, who are crafting their nation’s modern mythology.

In 2012’s The Act of Killing, filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer explored the mass genocide in Indonesia from 1965 to 1966, exposing the horrors of that regime. In this year’s The Look of Silence,...

Read More: Reality Checks: Is 'The Look of Silence' the Best Documentary of the Year? Adi Rukun never knew his brother Ramli, whose death at the hands of Indonesian death squads during the 1965 genocide plays a large role in Joshua Oppenheimer's 2014 Oscar-nominated documentary "The Act of Killing." Throughout Oppenheimer's years in Indonesia documenting these atrocities, Rukun would come to serve as one the filmmaker's great collaborators, with many speculating he is Oppenheimer's anonymous co-director.   Behind the scenes, he acted as the filmmaker's guide to the families who live in the fearful shadow of the 500,000 to 1 million who were massacred. He would also serve as the director's moral touchstone and watch hours of footage Oppenheimer shot of the genocide's boastful leaders, who. in "The Act of Killing," went so far as to reenact how they brutally killed the Indonesian farmers suspected of being Communists. But Rukun didn't want to.

Joshua Oppenheimer received his first Oscar nomination for “The Act of Killing” (2013), a harrowing documentary in which former leaders of Indonesian death-squads reenacted their killings through the artifice of Hollywood filmmaking. His new companion film, “The Look of Silence,” is a riveting portrayal of Adi Rukun, who confronts those who killed his brother during the country’s mass genocide is also nominated for Best Documentary Feature. Both director and subject took part in a recent webcam chat (watch above), in which they spoke candidly about the risks involved in making this movie. -Break- Subscribe to Gold Derby Breaking News Alerts & Experts’ Latest Oscar Predictions “This is really the film I originally set out to make,” reveals Oppenheimer. He explains how he originally got the idea for the film, which grew out of his experiences working with Indonesian plantation workers who we...

Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary feature takes his earlier The Act of Killing one step further. An Indonesian optometrist dares to interview death squad leaders that half a century before murdered a million people as part of an anti-communist genocide. The eye doctor's own brother was one of the victims. What we see sheds light on a long-suppressed outrage, smothered by a reign of terror and international indifference. The Look of Silence Blu-ray + Digital HD Drafthouse / Cinedigm Films 2014 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 103 min. / Street Date January 12, 2016 / 29.93 Starring Adi Rukun Cinematography Lars Skree Film Editor Nils Pagh Andersen Original Music Seri Banang, Mana Tahan Produced by Sygne Byrge Sorensen Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

We in America truly live a sheltered First-World life, where a level of basic security is still considered the norm. But terrible events that occur beyond the reach of the news media, or that are simply inconvenient,...