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This response is hardly surprising for a film that in its blurb describes democratic Indonesia as 'a country where killers are celebrated as heroes'. It must be remembered (that) Indonesia has gone through a reformation. Presidential spokesman for foreign affairs Teuku Faizasyah recently commented to local media that the film portrays Indonesia as a 'cruel and lawless nation,' adding 'that is not appropriate, not fitting. The Indonesian Government has not completely ignored the film. There was a brief period when the website became unavailable, for which the government denies responsibility, and one newspaper editor in West Java was mobbed for using the film to criticise the group Pancasila Youth, an incident which was more about his comments than the film itself.Ĭomparatively speaking, the Miss World pageant last year created a bigger stir. There have been few disruptions to the promotion of the film in Indonesia. The Australian-dominated Ubud Writers and Readers Festival held an open screening without incident, clearly advertised in its promotional material. Several other screenings were held peacefully in Jakarta and elsewhere.Įven for those who haven't made a screening, the film is easily accessible in Indonesia via free download or pirated DVD. Since the film is not banned, private screenings are not technically illegal, and are thereby protected by law from the possibility of a violent response by those who disagree with its message.Īs exciting as it sounds, some of the so-called 'guerrilla screenings' of the film in Indonesia were not quite as underground as you might expect. Director Joshua Oppenheimer deliberately avoided censorship by not submitting the film for approval, predicting it would be rejected. Let's begin by correcting a myth: the film is not banned in Indonesia. It's worth considering the film in the context of contemporary Indonesia, a post-authoritarian state in the process of consolidating as a democracy, and in a broader historical context. One notable voice against the trend is the BBC's documentary editor Nick Fraser, who in The Guardian last weekend dismissed it as 'a high-minded snuff movie.'

In the Western press, critics have responded with almost unanimous enthusiasm to the documentary film The Act of Killing, which could win an Academy Award on Sunday.