This 2012 Indonesian documentary, directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, about the people who participated in the mass killings of the 1960s is strange and shocking. The film follows the killers, now revered by right wing politic groups, interviewing them about their memories of their acts and, distinctively, handing over the filming of the documentary to them, allowing them to recreate their acts and to represent their self-perceptions in fantastical tableau. Such is the careful crafting of the film, you are never far from details of the horrors they have committed, even when the scenes depicting their acts take on increasingly surreal and comic hues. The killers place themselves in their victims place and we see them painfully trying to justify their actions whilst simultaneously playing on their reputations as superstars.

Watched alongside Nostalgia for the Light (2010), a Chilean documentary that presents mass killings from the perspective of absent victims rather than their killers, The Act of Killing provides a complete picture of the social and psychological implications of the moments of politics violence. It’s an important film to watch if you want to understand how mass murder can become normalised and terribly lauded. The closing titles in which the majority of crew members who made the documentary are labelled as ‘anonymous’ says it all.

Watch in a double bill with Nostalgia for the Light.