3. The Act of Killing
Site Score: 7, IMDb Score: 10 Overall Score: 17
Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer
Year: 2012
The Act of Killing is not a documentary on serial killers in a conventional sense. It deals with the Indonesian killing in 1965 and 1966, when some 500,000 to one million communists and their sympathizers were killed by various armed groups, often encouraged by the Indonesian government. The movie features several death squad leaders, who have personally committed and ordered murders during the purge. One of them, Anwar Congo, claimed to have killed more than a 1,000 people. They also admitted to extortion and blackmail of their victims. The movie was highly praised by the critics and have received numerous awards, including the Best European Documentary and The Stanley Kubrick Award for Bold and Innovative Filmmaking among others. It was nominated for the best documentary in 2014 Academy Awards and was named one of the top 50 films of the decade in the Guardian’s list.
