The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer (Director), 2012

Imagine if forty years after the holocaust, the Nazis were still in power and the henchmen are being interviewed still boasting about their crimes.

In 1965, Anwar Congo and his friends were small-time gangsters who used to sell film tickets on the black market. They are now the leaders of the proregime paramilitary Panacasila Youth that flourished under the leadership of

Indonesia's General Suharto who was backed by the US. They are also celebrated mass murderers and death squad leaders, who are openly eager to re-enact the way in which they tortured and murdered over one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese, and intellectuals. Like some feral children who were never guided by any social moral code they are now keen to reconstruct their crimes in the style of their favourite Hollywood movie genres. Oppenheimer takes us on a surreal journey that soon turns into a nightmare. The perpetrators enthusiastically create elaborate sets of torture chambers and burn villages using pyrotechnics. Anwar and his friends seem to delight in the opportunity to become true Hollywood stars. When challenged, Adi, who is one of the more senior perpetrators, angrily exclaims: “War crimes are defined by winners. I am a winner so I can make my own definition.”

Unlike other films made about genocide, such as Shoah by Claude Lanzmann, this astonishing film is unprecedented because the war lords seem without conscience and have never attempted to cover up their crimes, nor make any effort to use any euphemisms to hide their guilt and shame away. On the contrary, even today they live a luxurious, corrupt, and banal life still prepared to show off their crimes and exert their power with terror and fear on the powerless citizens of present-day Indonesia.

The film's genius is in its use of the camera and interviews. Oppenheimer not only filmed the perpetrators bragging about mass killing but by asking them how they want to be seen and how they see themselves,