The Act of Killing

JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER
Director
Born in 1974, USA, Oscar®-nominated film director Joshua Oppenheimer is recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant” (2015-2019). His debut feature film, The Act of Killing (2012, 159 min and 117 min), was named Film of the Year in the 2013 by the Guardian and the Sight and Sound Film Poll, and won 72 international awards, including the European Film Award 2013, BAFTA 2014, Asia Pacific Screen Award 2013, Berlinale Audience Award 2013, and Guardian Film Award 2014 for Best Film. It was nominated for the 2014 Academy Award® for Best Documentary, and has been released theatrically in 31 countries. His second film, The Look of Silence (2014, 99 min), premiered In Competition at the 71st Venice Film Festival, where it won five awards including the Grand Jury Prize, the international critics award (FIPRESCI Prize) and the European film critics award (FEDEORA Prize). Since then, The Look of Silence has received the Danish Academy Award for Best Documentary and the prestigious Danish Arts Council Award. It screened at the Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Busan International Film Festival (Best World Documentary), the Copenhagen Documentary Festival (Grand Prize), Festival d’Angers (Audience Award for Best Film), and the Berlin Film Festival (Peace Film Prize). Oppenheimer is a partner at Final Cut for Real in Denmark, and Artistic Director of the Centre for Documentary and Experimental Film at the University of Westminster in London.

Filmography (as Director)
– THE LOOK OF SILENCE (documentary; a family of survivors confronts the men who
murdered their son, 2014)
– SHOW OF FORCE (short, 2007)
– THE GLOBALIZATION TAPES (documentary, co-directed with Christine Cynn, 2003)
– LAND OF ENCHANTMENT (short, co-directed with Christine Cynn, 2001)
– THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE (50 mins, 1997; Gold Hugo, Chicago Film Festival, 1998; Telluride Film Festival, 1997; Best Experimental Film, New England, 1998)
– THESE PLACES WE’VE LEARNED TO CALL HOME (short, 1997; Gold Spire, San Francisco Film Festival, 1997)

SIGNE BYRGE SØRENSEN
Producer
Signe Byrge Sørensen has been a producer for 14 years. She began in SPOR Media in 1998, moved to Final Cut Productions ApS in 2004 and founded Final Cut for Real ApS in 2009. She has produced documentaries in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Thailand, Argentina, Denmark and Sweden. She was the Danish co-producer for STEPS FOR THE FUTURE IN SOUTHERN AFRICA. She holds an MA in International Development Studies and Communication Studies from Roskilde University, Denmark, and is a graduate of both EURODOC (2003) and EAVE (2010). She has lectured at Roskilde University, the University of Århus, the Danish Film School, the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and on the documentary training courses ESODOC and ExORIENTE.

Amongst the films that Signe has produced are: THE KID AND THE CLOWN (dir. Ida Grøn, 2011), FOOTBALL IS GOD (dir. Ole Bendtzen, 2010) and LETTERS FROM DENMARK (dir. 10 Danish directors, 2006). She has also produced and co-directed (with Janus Billeskov Jansen) VOICES OF THE WORLD (2005) and THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING MLABRI (2007). She was the post producer on Jan Troell’s EVERLASTING MOMENTS (2008), which won six national awards and was nominated for a Golden Globe.

ANONYMOUS
Co-Director and many others
Due to the nature of this film – its subject matter, production methods and the context in
which it has been made – it has unfortunately been necessary to credit numerous Indonesian partners and collaborators, working across all aspects of the film (from Co-Direction and Cinematography to Sound Recording, Production Management, Make Up, Music, Choreography and Technical Support) as Anonymous. Behind this honourable and historically resonant naming stand many remarkable people, who have worked tirelessly to bring these profoundly disturbing stories to wider attention. Their courage has made this film possible. Without them, it could not have been more than an idea, a wish. We share with them a deep hope that our collective labour might contribute in some way to a shift in the forces currently shaping and governing Indonesia, and towards a justice for both individuals and communities. We thank them for their trust in us, and the extraordinary commitment they have brought to this project.

CHRISTINE CYNN
Co-Director
Christine Cynn has been directing documentary and experimental films for the past 14 years. For the last decade, she has been developing new ways to document the human imagination. Educated at Harvard, and the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to Uganda, she co-directed THE GLOBALIZATION TAPES (2003) with Joshua Oppenheimer. She has written screenplays for FilmFour and was a founding member of the Vision Machine Film Project in London. She was a researcher on the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Genocide and Genre project. Cynn is currently developing a project, Science Future, combining documentary with fiction, about how scientists imagine the future.

ERROL MORRIS
Executive Producer
Errol Morris became executive producer of THE ACT OF KILLING in early 2010, after Joshua Oppenheimer screened two hours of roughly edited scenes for him at his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Fascinated, Errol compared the material to one of his favorite films of all time, Kazuo Hara’s THE EMPEROR’S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON. Ever since, Errol has been a passionate ambassador and champion of both the movie and its innovations in filmmaking method and language.

Filmmaker and author Errol Morris’ films include TABLOID (2010), STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (2008), The Fog of War (2003) Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999), Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (1997), A Brief History of Time (1992), THE Thin Blue Line (1988), Vernon, Florida (1981), and Gates of Heaven (1978). He has won many awards, including an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, an Emmy, the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival, the Silver Bear at Berlin International Film Festival, the Golden Horse at the Taiwan International Film Festival and the Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America. His documentaries have repeatedly appeared on many ‘ten best’ lists and he has been the subject of a full retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1999.

Morris has directed over 1000 television commercials, short films for the 2002 and 2007 Academy Awards and for charitable and political organizations such as Stand Up to Cancer and Moveon.org. In 2000-2001, Morris directed two seasons of the television series First Person. He has received five fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2007, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His new book “Wilderness of Error: The Trial of Jeffrey MacDonald” (2012) examines the nature of evidence and proof in the notorious MacDonald murders. His previous book, “Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography,” was a New York Times bestseller and a New York Times notable book of 2011.

WERNER HERZOG
Executive Producer
In May 2012, our UK executive producer, André Singer, introduced a fine cut of THE ACT OF KILLING to Werner Herzog. Astonished by the film, he called it “unprecedented in the history of cinema.” Since then, he has been a tireless friend and supporter of the film, and has offered invaluable creative feedback during the final stages of editing.

Werner Herzog was born in Munich on September 5, 1942. He grew up in a remote mountain village in Bavaria and studied History and German Literature in Munich and Pittsburgh.

He made his first film in 1961 at the age of 19. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature- and documentary films, such as EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL (1970), AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (1972), STROSZEK (1977), NOSFERATU (1978), FITZCARRALDO (1982), LESSONS OF DARKNESS (1992), LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY (1997),  MY BEST FIEND (1999), INVINCIBLE (2000), GRIZZLY MAN (2005), ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (2007), THE BAD LIEUTENANT (2009), CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS (2011), and INTO THE ABYSS (2012).

Werner Herzog has published more than a dozen books of prose, and directed as many operas. Werner Herzog lives in Munich and Los Angeles.

ANDRÉ SINGER
Executive Producer
André Singer was awarded his doctorate from Oxford University as an anthropologist specializing in Iran and Afghanistan. He moved into film and television in the 1970s to work on anthropological films for Granada Television. He has worked in documentary film since then, as a researcher, producer, director, executive producer and commissioning editor. He was Series Editor of Disappearing World, then headed the BBC Documentary Department’s Independent Unit where he set up the Fine Cut series (later to become Storyville) and worked with Jean Rouch, Werner Herzog, D.A. Pennebaker and Fred Wiseman.

As an independent producer, he established Café Productions and later West Park Pictures (now a DCD Media owned company). André is currently serving on the TV Committee of BAFTA, he is a Documentary Campus board member, a Vice President of the Royal Anthropological Institute and Chair of their Film Committee. He has been responsible for several hundred hours of factual programs for the international TV market and producer or executive producer of fourteen films with Werner Herzog since Lessons of Darkness in 1992.

ANNE KÖHNCKE
Producer
Anne Köhncke holds an MA in Film and Media. She has specialized in the financing of documentaries in the Nordic countries. She joined Final Cut for Real in 2009, after holding a position as Commissioning Editor for DR2. Before that she was a Sales Executive at TV2 World, and has worked for EDN and Filmkontakt Nord. Anne attended the EAVE Producer Workshop in 2011. Anne has produced FOOTBALL IS GOD (dir. Ole Bendtzen, 2010), THE KID AND THE CLOWN (dir. Ida Grøn, 2011) and RETURNED (dir. Marianne Hougen- Moraga, 2011).

She is currently developing the series Cathedrals of Culture together with Neue Road Movies in Berlin and 10 award winning directors,
including Wim Wenders, Michael Glawogger, Victor Kossakovsky and Michael Madsen.

JORAM TEN BRINK
Producer & Executive Producer
Joram ten Brink works as a writer, director and producer of documentary and experimental films in the UK and Holland. His films have been broadcast and theatrically released in the UK, USA, Holland, Israel, France, Germany and Spain. His work has been screened at international film festivals and museums, including the Berlin and Rotterdam film festivals and at MOMA in New York. His recent publications include “Building Bridges: the Cinema of Jean Rouch” (2007, Wallflower Press) and “Killer Images: Documentary Film, Memory and the Performance of Violence” (2012, Columbia University Press). Joram ten Brink is a Professor of Film at the University of Westminster in London and heads its practice-based PhD programme in the moving image.

TORSTEIN GRUDE
Co-Producer
Co-producer Torstein Grude is an award winning film director, cinematographer and producer. He is founder and partner in Piraya Film and Hinterland Nova and Kudos Family Distribution. His recent productions include the Emmy nominated Belarusian Waltz (dir. Andrzej Fidyk, 2007), the Joris Ivens finalist YODOK STORIES (dir. Andrzej Fidyk, 2009) and the Chicago Film Fest winner ON A TIGHTROPE (Dir. Petr Lom, 2007). He has also recently produced GULABI GANG (dir. Nistha Jain, 2012), co-produced by Final Cut for Real, which won the Grimstad Film Festival Documentary award in 2012.

CARLOS ARANGO DE MONTIS
Cinematographer
Carlos Arango de Montis has shot some of the most distinctive documentaries and features to come out of Latin America in recent years, including Diego Luna’s portrait of the legendary Mexican boxer, J.C. CHAVEZ (2007, Tribeca Film Festival) and Maria Roque’s PAPA IVAN (2004, Best Documentary, Havana Film Festival). His fiction films include Newton Aduaka’s EZRA (2007, Sundance, Cannes, FESPACO Grand Prix) and RAGE (2001, FESPACO Best First Film), as well as VIOLET OF A THOUSAND COLORS (Colombian Film Award, 2005) and STORIES OF DISENCHANTMENT (2005).

LARS SKREE
Cinematographer
Studying originally with the famous Danish photographer Morten Bo, Lars Skree founded the photo agency Modlys in 1988 and has produced work internationally, from Iraq to Afghanistan, and exhibitions on the Berlin Wall, the end of Czechoslovakia, the Intifada and the Kurdish PKK. He graduated from the Danish National Film School in 1997. His award-winning cinematography includes ARMADILLO (nominated for four EMMYs including one for cinematography), Ticket to Paradise, Love on Delivery, Freeway and SVENKAS. He has worked on numerous documentaries globally and a number of Danish features, as well as commercials.

NIELS PAGH ANDERSEN
Editor
Niels Pagh Andersen started as an assistant to two of the most influential editors in Danish cinema, Christian Hartkopp and Janus Billeskov Jansen. A freelance editor since 1979, he has edited more than 200 titles, including features, documentaries, short and educational films, television programmes and commercials, among them The Three Rooms of Melancholia (dir. Pirjo Honkosalo, Venice Film Festival, 2004, CPH-DOX First Prize (shared), Prix Italia) and EVERLASTING MOMENTS (dir. Jan Troell, Golden Globe nominated, Swedish entry for Academy Awards 2008).

He has worked in Sweden, Norway and Finland, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Britain, USA, Brazil, Zimbabwe and the Fiji Islands. He is also a regular visiting lecturer. In 2005, he received the Roos Award from the Danish Film Institute.

JANUS BILLESKOV JANSEN
Editor
Since 1970, Janus Billeskov Jansen has edited a great many internationally acclaimed feature films and documentaries, and directed numerous Danish documentaries. He has worked with many of the most influential Danish directors of the past 30 years. Most significant has been the lifelong creative relationship with the Academy Award-winning director Bille August. Collaborations include LES MISERABLES (1998), The House of The Spirits (1993), The Best Intentions (1992, Palme d’Or, Cannes) and Pelle the Conqueror (1988, Palme d’Or, Cannes; Academy Award for Best Foreign Film; Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film).

Recent work includes The Hunt, (2012, Dir. Thomas Vinterberg), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009, dir. Niels Arden Oplev) and Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country (2008, Dir. Anders Østergaard; awarded a.o. the World Cinema Editing Award at Sundance 2009, Joris Ivens Award 2008, Grierson Award 2008, nominated for Academy Award). He teaches editing and narrative development at The National Film School of Denmark. He won The Danish Film Academy Award in 1984, 1988 and 1995 and a Bodil Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

CHARLOTTE MUNCH BENGTSEN
Editor
Originally trained as a dancer and choreographer, Charlotte Munch Bengsten studied film editing at the UK’s National Film and Television School. She has edited a number of documentaries, including AMERICAN LOSERS (dir. Ada Bligaard Søby, 2006), TANKOGRAD (dir. Boris Bertram, 2011), COMPLAINTS CHOIR (dir. Ada Bligaard Søby, 2009), and, most recently, THE BASTARD SINGS THE SWEETEST SONG (dir. Christy Garland, 2012).

ARIADNA FATJÒ-VILAS MESTRE
Editor
Based in London, and a graduate of the UK’s National Film and Television School, Ariadna Fatjó-Vilas Mestre has edited many fiction titles, documentaries, animations and commercials, including award-winning titles by Ana Viana, Eva Weber, Nicola Mills, Aine O’Brien and Alan Grossman. She has produced work for a number of major broadcasters, including the BBC, Channel 4, PBS, RTE and MTV.

MARIKO MONTPETIT
Editor
Working across fiction and documentary, performance and the arts, Mariko Montpetit’s feature titles include The Sweeney, Sex, Needles and Roubles, Virtual Borders and A Journey to Africa. Her work in performance includes collaborations with Cirque du Soleil, Laila Diallo and many productions with Simon McBurney and Complicite.

FINAL CUT FOR REAL APS, DENMARK
Final Cut for Real is dedicated to high-end creative documentaries for the international market. Our policy is to be curious, daring and seek out directors with serious artistic ambitions. We do not from the outset set any limits on subjects or locations. We look for interesting stories, great characters and in-depth social analysis – and we also try to give the films a twist of humor.

Our method is for our producers to work closely with “their” directors from the first idea to the final film, and keep on exchanging ideas and feedback. Together we cover a wide range of development and production expertise – and work with younger talent as well as established filmmakers to create a productive mixture of experience and new approaches to documentary filmmaking.

Among recent productions are THE HUMAN SCALE by Andreas Dalsgaard (2012), TRAVELING WITH MR. T by Andreas Dalsgaard and Simon Lereng Wilmont (2012), THE KID AND THE CLOWN by Ida Grøn (2011), RETURNED by Marianne Hougen Moraga (2011) and FOOTBALL IS GOD by Ole Bendtzen (2010).

Recent co-productions are TPBAFK: PIRATE BAY AWAY FROM KEYBOARD by Simon Klose with Nonami & Anagram AB in Sweden, GULABI GANG by Nistha Jain with Piraya Film in Norway and CANNED DREAMS by Katja Gauriloff with Oktober Oy in Finland.

Our films are often supported by the Danish Film Institute, Danish and Nordic ministries and NGOs. We usually work with the Nordic public service channels (DR, TV2 Denmark, SVT, YLE, NRK, TV2 Norway) and regularly with European and international channels such as VPRO (the Netherlands), ZDF/Arte (France/Germany), More4 (UK), SBS (Australia), IBA (Israel), and sometimes NHK (Japan), VRT (Belgium), Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Our films have won Danish, Nordic and international awards and have been screened at numerous festivals around the world.

PIRAYA FILM AS, NORWAY
Piraya Film is an independent production company based in Stavanger, Norway. The company was founded in 1999 by filmmakers Torstein Grude and Trond Kvist with the aim of making creative high-end documentaries for release in the market worldwide. The company has since made 20 productions, which have received broad recognition and many nominations and awards. e.g. 2009 Emmy nomination, Joris Ivens finalist, Winner Jerusalem Film Festival, Winner Golden Chair Norwegian Film Festival, Winner Chicago Intl Film Festival. Among the latest works are documentaries on Human Rights issues in North Korea, Georgia, Belarus and China, e.g. Yodok Stories, Russian Lessons, On a Tightrope and Belarusian Waltz. Piraya Film is also regularly involved in international co-productions.

NOVAYA ZEMLYA LTD., UNITED KINGDOM
Novaya Zemlya Ltd is an independent production company established in 2008 for the production of Joshua Oppenheimer and Christine Cynn’s filmic exploration of the 1965-66 genocide.

SPRING FILMS LTD, UNITED KINGDOM
Spring Films is a London based production company specialising in international co- productions and high-end documentaries for television, cinema, DVD, IMAX and multi- media platforms.

Spring Films has expanded its creative team to include some of the most successful directors, producers, executive producers and commissioning editors in UK television. Between them they have created hundreds of award-winning films, working with figures such as Werner Herzog, Carol Morley, Bettany Hughes, Stephen Fry, Brian Blessed, Michael Palin and Hugh Laurie.

Led by André Singer, the Spring Films board consists of Sir Tom Shebbeare, Richard Creasey, Richard Melman, Lynette Singer, Bob Vallone and John Paul Davidson. They have produced hundreds of hours of award-winning programming for theatrical release and international broadcasters such as the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, SKY, Channel 5, RTE, Canal +, France 1&2, ARTE, ZDF, SVT, YLE, NRK, VRT, RAI, ABC, SBS, Discovery, National Geographic, PBS, History Canada, the Reader’s Digest Association, ITVS, NHK & CCTV.