The Act of Killing

When the Indonesian government was overthrown in 1965, small-time gangster Anwar Congo and his friends went from selling movie tickets on the black market to leading anti-communist death squads in the mass murder of over a million people. Anwar boasts of killing hundreds with his own hands, but he's lived in his country with impunity ever since. When approached to make a film about their role in the genocide, Anwar and his friends eagerly comply-but their idea of being in a movie is not to provide reflective testimony, but to dance their way through musical numbers, twist arms in film noir gangster scenes, and gallop across the prairies as yodeling cowboys. A cinematic fever dream, The Act of Killing presents a gripping conflict between moral imagination and moral catastrophe.