About the Characters

Anwar Congo

Executioner in 1965, a school dropout at grade four; a movie gangster and a founding father of the Pancasila Youth paramilitary group; at the time of filming, Congo was 72.

Herman Koto

Gangster and paramilitary leader; Anwar's partner in filmmaking.

Yapto Soerjosoemarno

Leader of the Pancasila Youth.

Safit Pardede

Local paramilitary leader who also acts in Anwar's film.

Sunardi

Death squad leader in 1965.

Suryono

Anwar's neighbor, who portrays a communist in Anwar's film.

Adi Zulkadry

Executioner in 1965.

This audacious, horrifying, boldly experimental plunge into the mind-set of murderers and the culture of impunity breaks so many rules of documentary decorum that it virtually creates its own genre: investigative improv, perhaps. Or, better yet, Brechtian nonfiction. Whatever you call it, The Act of Killing is a must-see...A brilliant, powerful reckoning with the wages of history, mendacity and denial.

— Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

This feature-length documentary may be one of the most horrifying films you'll ever see, and one of the most edifying.

— Joe Morganstern, The Wall Street Journal

Startling...blending the horrific and the absurd in a disturbing cocktail...it destabilizes our sense of the boundary between make-believe violence and its real-world counterpart...Repellent but also curiously fascinating, as Hannah Arendt's observation about the 'banality of evil' is given a chilling postmodern twist.

— A.O. Scott, The New York Times