Drafthouse Films, in conjuction with Cinedigm, has announced the Blu-ray release of
The Act of Killing, the breakout documentary that won over audiences at Toronto, Telluride, SXSW, True/False and Berlin (where it won the Audience Award), and went on to record-breaking box-office openings in New York and other major markets.
The Act of Killing comes to Blu-ray on January 14, 2014.
Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer and executive produced by Werner Herzog (
Grizzly Man, Into the Abyss) and Errol Morris (
The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War),
The Act of Killing examines a country where Indonesian death squad leaders are celebrated as heroes, challenging them to reenact their real-life mass-killings via musical numbers, action and comedy sequences and other genres of the American movies they love. The hallucinatory result of Oppenheimer's daring idea is a cinematic fever dream, an unsettling journey deep into the imaginations of mass murderers and the shockingly banal regime of corruption and impunity they inhabit.
When the Indonesian government was overthrown in 1965, small-time gangster Anwar Congo and his friends went from selling movie tickets on the black market to leading anti-communist death squads in the mass murder of over a million people in one of the most overlooked genocides in recent history. The film ventures deep into the minds of the now-elderly killers and how they face the deadly acts they've done in a society that doesn't ask them to.
"I have not seen a film as powerful, surreal and frightening in at least a decade," said Herzog. "It is unprecedented in the history of cinema." Morris added, "Like all great documentaries,
The Act of Killing demands another way of looking at reality... an amazing and impressive film."
Championed by critics, the film achieved the largest U.S. per theater average for a documentary release to date in 2013 with its exclusive opening at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema in New York City. It went on to open at Los Angeles' Landmark Nuart, Washington, D.C.'s Landmark E Street and in over 70 markets and 150+ theaters nationwide.
Texas native Joshua Oppenheimer has worked for over a decade with militias, death squads and their victims to explore the relationship between political violence and the public imagination. Educated at Harvard and Central Saint Martins, London, his award-winning films include
The Globalization Tapes (2003, co-directed with Christine Cynn),
The Entire History of the Louisana Purchase (1998, Gold Hugo, Chicago Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival),
These Places We've Learned to Call Home (1996, Gold Spire, San Francisco Film Festival) and numerous shorts. Oppenheimer is Senior Researcher on the U.K. Arts and Humanities Research Council's Genocide and Genre project and has published widely on these themes. He is currently based in Copenhagen.
The Blu-ray release of
The Act of Killing features both the original 122-minute theatrical release and a significantly longer 166-minute director's cut. Supplemental content includes:
- Audio Commentary with Oppenheimer and Herzog
- 45-minute interview with Oppenheimer on Democracy Now!
- VICE Presents: Herzog and Morris on The Act of Killing
- Deleted scenes
- Trailers
- 40-page booklet featuring an essay by Morris