Everyone sometimes does something which might not be a good thing to do. Despite that knowledge we still decide to go on with our lives because we think of reasons to justify our actions. If someone confronts us on it, we are able to explain why we have done something and often not feel any guilt about it, simply because we tell ourselves that something was allowed.

With his controversial documentary The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer told us which gruesome events took place in Indonesia in the sixties. More than a million people were murdered because they were said to be communists and Oppenheimer pointed his camera at the men responsible. They openly told stories about what they did and even re-enacted them in a variety of film styles, which made it even more surreal.

In that documentary, the focus was primarily on the perpetrators. Survivors and relatives showed up only briefly. With The Look of Silence the focus is on one family where the eldest brother, Ramli, lost his life in a terrible way Continue reading →