Joshua Oppenheimer

Cinema has long shaped not only how mass violence is perceived but also how it is performed. Today, when media coverage is central to the execution of terror campaigns and news anchormen serve as embedded journalists, a critical understanding of how the moving image is implicated in the imaginations and actions of perpetrators and survivors of violence is all the more urgent. If the cinematic image and mass violence are among the defining features of modernity, the former is significantly implicated in the latter, and the nature of this implication is the book's central focus.

Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, The Act of Killing is a journey into the memories and imaginations of perpetrators, offering insight into the minds of mass killers. The Act of Killing is about killers who have won, and the sort of society they have built. Unlike aging Nazis or Rwandan génocidaires, they have not been forced by history to admit they participated in crimes against humanity. Instead, they have written their own triumphant history, becoming role models for millions of young paramilitaries.