Acceptance speech by Joshua Oppenheimer, Director of The Act of Killing and winner of the Documentary category at the EE Britsh Academy Film Awards in 2014.
JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: Thank you BAFTA, thank you everybody who worked on The Act of Killing in the UK, in Demark and in Indonesia. The Act of Killing is helping to catalyse a change in how Indonesia talks about its past. The media and the public are finally talking about the moral catastrophe of the genocide of 1965 without fear, and they are debating without fear the connections between that genocide and the moral catastrophe of the present day regime that the killers have built and continue to preside over.
I hope we will all have the courage to continue to look at how we are much closer to perpetrators than we like to think. The British and American governments both enthusiastically supported the 1965 genocide and helped to design it. They continued to support the military regime which followed, and there will be no constructive or ethical relationship with Indonesia or so many countries across the global south until we can take collective responsibility for our role in these crimes, for our role in supporting, participating in and ultimately ignoring these crimes.
I dedicate this award to my anonymous Indonesian crew including my anonymous Indonesian co-director, who gave eight years of his life risking his safety, knowing that he could not stand with me to accept this award until there is major change in Indonesia.
Thank you (Indonesian spoken), thank you so very much.
Download this transcript
acceptance_-_best_documentary.pdf
