"This film was more difficult because we were really fearing for our safety" - Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer on his film THE LOOK OF SILENCE

After his earth shattering documentary The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer returned to Indonesia to explore the aftermath of the genocide of the Communist Purges to shoot The Look of Silence. In this documentary, he sides more openly with the families of the victims and their search for truth and reconciliation, which is hopelessly followed by a deafening silence.

This interview with Joshua Oppenheimer was conducted for FRED Film Radio after The Look of Silence's premiere last year at the 71st Venice Film Festival. Click here to listen to the full interview on FRED Film Radio.

MATT MICUCCI: Did you always think of you would revisit the story of the Indonesian purges from the point of view of the victims?

JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: I always knew that this story had to be told, in fact it's the story that I wanted to initially tell when I went to Indonesia - what it's like for the survivors to have to build a life in the haunted silence of the aftermath of the genocide and in a space run by the still powerful perpetrators. What does it mean for the survivors not even being able to publicly grieve and mourn their losses and then have to live in this silence. Only when I began this process the army stopped us from shooting back in 2003. The survivors then suggested that I film the perpetrators and then suggested I'd continue with the perpetrators to find a way to expose a national lie, the way a whole country has been founded on the basis of terror and lies and what it means for Indonesia but also for all of us as human beings.

MM: What did you learn from this experience?

JO: I learned that we all do things that are wrong and we all tell ourselves stories to justify our actions. That's something that we see in The Act of Killing. But I also learned that no perpetrator will admit what they've done is wrong unless they're forced to, and for that there has to be political and social change. There was a truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa because the Apartheid regime fell. Here, the perpetrators are still in power and they will not admit that they were wrong first because they are afraid of revenge and they're afraid to lose their power. Also, they're afraid of their own guilt and having to live with themselves knowing themselves as mass murderers. But you cannot have healing and you cannot have truth and reconciliation until the perpetrators truly acknowledge that what they did was wrong.

MM: Were there more risks in filming there this time around?

JO: Yeah, making The Look of Silence was actually more risky than The Act of Killing. The Act of Killing was emotionally painful, it led to nightmares and insomnia. But this film was more difficult because we were really fearing for our safety. We would shoot the confrontation scenes with the powerful perpetrators with only my Danish crew, no Indonesian crew, with mobile phones with data erased from them so that no one would be able to find our Indonesian friends or track down our indonesian crew. Adi [central subject, brother of one of the victims of the purges] would go in with no ID and we would go with two cars so that it would be easier to make a getaway and not be followed. We had to have our bags packed. We were afraid.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Joshua Oppenheimer on The Look of Silence on FRED Film Radio. The Look of Silence by Joshua Oppenheimer is out now in UK cinemas.