The Look of Silence


The Look of Silence is a 2014 internationally co-produced documentary film directed by Joshua Oppenheimer about the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66. The film is a companion piece to his 2012 documentary The Act of Killing. Executive producers were Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, and Andre Singer. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 88th Academy Awards.

Overview

A middle-aged Indonesian man, whose brother was brutally murdered in the 1965 purge of communists, confronts the men who carried out the killings. Out of concern for his safety, the man is not fully identified in the film and is credited only as "anonymous," as are many of the film's crew positions. Some shots consist of the man watching extra footage from The Act of Killing, which includes video of the men who killed his brother. He visits some of the killers and their collaborators—including his uncle—under the pretense of an eye exam. Although none of the killers expresses any remorse, the daughter of one of them is clearly shaken when she hears, apparently for the first time, the details of the killings.

Release

The film was screened in the official competition at the 71st Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize, the International Film Critics Award, the Italian online critics award, the European Film Critics Award, as well as the Human Rights Nights Award. Since then, it has gone on to win multiple awards, including Best World Documentary at the Busan International Film Festival, the Grand Prize at, the prize for Best Documentary at the Starz Denver Film Festival, a Danish Arts Council Award for outstanding achievement in filmmaking, and the Best Film Award at the One World human rights documentary film festival.
Additionally, the film has screened at the Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Zurich Film Festival, IDFA, and MIFF.
On 10 November 2014, 2,000 people came to the official and public premiere of the film in Jakarta. On 10 December 2014, International Human Rights Day, there were 480 public screenings of the film across Indonesia. The screenings of the film in Indonesia has been sponsored by the National Human Rights Commission of Indonesia and the Jakarta Arts Council.
It was selected for screening in the Berlinale Special Galas section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2015.
In February 2016, Oppenheimer, along with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, screened the film for members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and their House counterparts, officials from the Department of State, and members of the White House National Security Council staff. Oppenheimer hoped the Oscar buzz the film was generating would pressure the US government to formally acknowledge its collusion in the killings.
After its theatrical release, the film aired on US television as part of the PBS series POV.

Reception

Critical response

The Look of Silence received critical acclaim. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 96% approval rating, and an average rating of 8.8/10, based on 104 reviews. The website's critical consensus states, "The Look of Silence delivers a less shocking – yet just as terribly compelling – companion piece to Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing. On Metacritic, the film has a 92 out of 100 rating based on 29 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". On 14 January 2016, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Awards and nominations