Through Joshua Oppenheimer’s footage of perpetrators of the 1965 Indonesian genocide, a family of survivors discovers how their son was murdered, as well as the identities of the killers. The documentary focuses on the youngest son, an optometrist named Adi, who decides to break the suffocating spell of submission and terror by doing something unimaginable in a society where the murderers remain in power: he confronts the men who killed his brother and, while testing their eyesight, asks them to accept responsibility for their actions. This unprecedented film initiates and bears witness to the collapse of fifty years of silence.

After the screening, we will be joined by two panelists to discuss the film:
Christian C. Lentz is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds a PhD and MS in Development Sociology from Cornell University and a Master’s of Environmental Science from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He specializes in Southeast Asia with particular focus on agrarian studies, development, state formation, nationalism, and nature-society relations. His publications have appeared in journals such as Geopolitics, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Political Geography, and Journal of Peasant Studies.

Megan Nicholas-Harper is a world traveller who has worked on public health issues in India, Thailand and Indonesia. With Friends of East Indonesia, she helped fundraise to clean water on the remote island of Rote. Heavy metals have led to high rates of child infant mortality and liver failure in adolescent children. By 2014, over 5,000 children were receiving free, clean drinking water. Currently, she’s pursuing a masters in water resource science and management at the Nicholas School of the Environment.