The Act of Killing

Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary breakthrough invents an entirely new ethical form — letting unrepentant killers stage their crimes as the movie-musicals they imagined while committing them. The result is a documentary so unsettling it forces a reckoning with the entire genre's assumptions about truth.

• Filmed over five years with the participation of confessed killers.
• Anwar Congo (the film's central figure) personally killed hundreds.
• Werner Herzog and Errol Morris co-produced.
• Nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar in 2014.
• Followed by the companion piece "The Look of Silence" from the victims' perspective.

• "War crimes are defined by the winners."
• "It is not enough to be a gangster. You have to be a free man."
• "I had to make my conscience small."
• "I never expected to look like this."
• "Have I sinned?"