Joshua Oppenheimer’s new documentary, “The Look of Silence” at Toronto and Venice

Joshua Oppenheimer’s new documentary, “The Look of Silence”, has been selected for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

“The Look of Silence”, a companion piece to his Oscar-nominated film, “The Act of Killing”, has been selected for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, where it will have its Canadian premiere. The film follows a young optometrist as he attempts to bring the past into focus. The family discovers how their son was murdered during the Indonesian genocide — as well as the identity of the men who murdered him. The film documents the confrontation in the absence of any truth and reconciliation process, while the murderers remain in power. The film is more than “the other side” of the story — it is the story of the victims, as well as a rich essay on memory, time and death. Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary “The Look of Silence” will have its world premiere in the competition at the 71st Venice Film Festival. “The Look of Silence”, a companion piece to his Oscar-nominated film, “The Act of Killing”, has been selected for this year’s Venice Film Festival, where it will have its world premiere. Produced by Signe Byrge Sørensen at Final Cut For Real, Joshua Oppenheimer’s new opus depicts the genocide in Indonesia in the mid-1960s — this time from the perspective of the victims. “The Look of Silence” follows a family who discover the perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide that murdered their son, accusing him of being a communist. Their youngest son, now an adult, vows to confront the people who took the life of his brother, asking how he can raise his children in a society where survivors are terrorised into silence. Oppenheimer describes the second act as “A lyrical elegy to this silence, but also a poem about breaking it and the trauma it represents.”