The Look of Silence

As a companion piece to the devastating 2013 documentary The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence film returns to the same topic as its predecessor — the mass killings in Indonesia that began in 1965 — and the continuing pride the crimes’ perpetrators maintain, believing their actions were justified. The Look of Silence is not an easy film to watch. But its examination of the myriad ways we deceive and blind ourselves to the truth puts it among the century’s most vital movies, illuminating in devastating detail how genocides happen, and how surprisingly simple it is for humans to act with unspeakable cruelty toward one another.

”The film does not stab as deeply at the schizoid moral hypocrisy of the perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide as its peerless predecessor, but instead offers an extraordinarily poignant, desperately upsetting meditation on the legacy of those killings, and on the bravery required to seek any kind of truth about them.” Jessica Kiang, the Playlist

Release date: July 17, 2015

Streaming on: Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play

Metacritic score: 92 out of 100

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