“The past is past. I don’t want to reme𝄹mber . . . the wound is healed,” says Kemat, an Indonesian man who survived the massacre of more than 10,000 people at the Snake River in 1965. As this documentary shows, nothing could be further from the tr🐟uth.
The massacre happened during the Indonesian genocide, a mad purge of anyone suspected of being a communist that left perhaps a million dead. This film follows one man, Adi, whose brother was tortured to death, and whﷺo uses his job as a traveling ophthalmologist to confront the killers.
Joshua Oppenheimer’s previous documentary, the superb “The Act of Killing,” focused on the genocide’s perpetrators, who remain in power. As the title indicates, this follow-up is dealing with a somewhat blunter set of sy𝕴mbols than its predecessor. It’s just as wrenching, though, and in a single scene with the daughter of a murderer, even manages to offer a faint pinpoint of hope.