The Act Of Killing

The film was about a group of gangsters who involved Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry, the two worked in partnership with the Pemuda Pancasila. The group hunted for comunists in Indonesia in the 1965-1966 killings, the organisation would interrogate the victims and shortly after kill them. The documentary looked into how the group killed these victims, in fact they were asked to create a film into how they killed each person. As Anwar was heavily into gangster movies, most scenes showed him dressed up in a suit looking like an American Gangster. In some scenes he actually states that his inspiration for how to kill people was from these sort of films. 

The main protagonist of this film is Anwar Congo who is
sat in the middle.

Throughout the film many scenes I found to attract my attention, but their was one scene in particular that stood out to me the most. The scene in which Anwar watched part of his movie back; the scene involved his co star Adi Zuladry wrapping a wire cord around his neck and almost strangling him to death. The reason this scene stood out to me was because Anwar actually realised how his victims were feeling when he was torturing them to death. The scene took an emotional turn when he started to realise that it was unfair and cruel for him to be killing these people in such an inhumane way.

Josh Oppenheimer was the main filmmaker in this documentary, although he was behind the camera most of the time he did have a small roll in this film. In many of the scenes Anwar would look behind the camera and refer to Josh as a safe place to be, he would ask Josh different questions and sometimes question whether he was saying the correct thing. At one part in the film the camera man did actually ask one of the characters a question to ensure that he continued talking, thus helping to gain information.

The film director had some very big names assist him, the names were Werner Herzog and Errol Morris. These two producers are very big names in film making, and you can understand that they helped as the film is well scripted and has a range of nice clean shots.

This film isn't the only film in the series, there is another film which Joshua created shortly after making the Act Of Killing. The film was called 'The Look Of Silence' the story was also about communism in the 1960s in Indonesia but instead the film follows a family whom are looking for the murderer who killed there son/brother. The film specifically follows one character who looks for the killer of his murderer, searching in far and wide to find him.