Brow Beat

Watch the Eerie, Gorgeous Trailer for Joshua Oppenheimer’s Follow-up to The Act of Killing

If you saw The Act of Killing, you probably weren’t surprised when its director, Joshua Oppenheimer, was awarded a MacArthur “Genius Grant” last month. Oppenheimer’s 2012 documentary about the men who carried out a mass murder sanctioned by the Indonesian government five decades ago was not without controversy, but it undeniably pioneered an imaginative, shocking, and totally gripping approach to documentary filmmaking. (Errol Morris, who produced the film along with Werner Herzog, explained some of Oppenheimer’s methods in Slate in 2013.)

Now, Oppenheimer is taking on Indonesia’s massacres again, but from a different angle. In The Look of Silence, Oppenheimer profiles a man whose brother was killed in the purge as he confronts his brother’s murderers, who have never been punished for their actions. The film has already won awards and critical accolades at film festivals, and judging from the trailer, it will be just as spellbinding and disturbing as its predecessor. The release date for The Look of Silence hasn’t been announced yet, but put it on your to-see list for 2015.