Dir.: Joshua Oppenheimer, Anonymous, Christine Cynn / 2013 / Denmark, Norway, UK / in Indonesian with English subtitles / 115 min / High Definition Digital

In 1965, over 2 million Indonesian civilians were murdered during a military coup. In the documentary The Act of Killing, the details behind this barely acknowledged incident are revealed through the voices of the killers themselves. In modern-day Indonesia, citizens still quake at the idea of discussing the decades-old atrocities. But in a strange turn, the men responsible walk free and are even celebrated in some circles of the shell-shocked society. Finding the killers more receptive to revisiting the past, the filmmakers convince the now old men, who proudly claim responsibility for countless deaths, to star in cinematic reenactments of their violent acts. The result is documentation that is part surreal Hollywood-style epic, part disturbing confession that takes us inside the violence-riddled minds of the perpetrators. A.O. Scott of The New York Times calls The Act of Killing “an inventive, profoundly upsetting, and dismayingly funny documentary.”