Produced with support from the Bertha Foundation, The Freedom of Expression Foundation, and the Finnish Film Foundation, Joshua Oppenheimer’s new documentary The Look of Silence follows a 44-year-old optometrist named Adi Rukun who confronts the men who killed his brother in the 1965 Indonesian genocide.
The film, released in July 2015, serves as a companion piece to Oppenheimer’s 2012 Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing, which offered a look at the aging culprits of the U.S.-backed genocide in Indonesia. When asked why he made The Look of Silence, Oppenheimer said, “it’s important to have a film that shows what it does to human beings to have to live for 50 years in fear, in unresolved trauma, in silence surrounded by the still powerful death squad leaders who murdered their families.”