From 2004 to 2012, he produced a series of films in Indonesia. His debut feature film about the individuals who participated in the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, The Act of Killing (2012), premiered at the 2012 Telluride Film Festival. It went on to win many prizes worldwide, including the European Film Award for Best Documentary, a Panorama Audience Award, and a Prize of the Ecumenical Jury from the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival.[8] The film also received the Robert Award by the Film Academy of Denmark, a Bodil Award by Denmark's National Association of Film Critics,[9] and the Aung San Suu Kyi Award at the Human Rights Human Dignity International Film Festival 2013.[10] Oppenheimer appeared on The Daily Show on August 13, 2013, to talk about The Act of Killing.[11]
The Act of Killing won the BAFTA for Best Documentary, European Film Award for Best Documentary, the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Documentary, and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 86th Academy Awards.[12]
In a 2015, interview with The New York Times, Oppenheimer stated that the West shares "a great deal" of responsibility for the mass killings in Indonesia, noting in particular that "the United States provided the special radio system so the Army could coordinate the killings over the vast archipelago. A man named Bob Martens, who worked at the United States Embassy in Jakarta, was compiling lists of thousands of names of Indonesian public figures who might be opposed to the new regime and handed these lists over to the Indonesian government."[16] In 2014, after a screening of The Act of Killing for US Congress members, Oppenheimer called on the US to acknowledge its role in the killings.[17] In October 2017, the U.S. government declassified thousands of files related to the killings, with officials citing the impact of Oppenheimer's films.[18]
In July 2016, he was named as a member of the main competition jury for the 73rd Venice International Film Festival.[19] In September 2017 he was the guest director for the Telluride Film Festival.[20]
A collaboration between the Independent Plantation Workers' Union of Sumatra, the International Union of Food and Agricultural Workers (IUF), and Vision Machine (Christine Cynn, Joshua Oppenheimer, Michael Uwemedimo, Andrea Luka Zimmerman). He was the producer.
2003
A Brief History of Paradise as Told by the Cockroaches
Acting on AIDS: Sex, Drugs & Politics (Acting on AIDS). London & New York: Serpent's Tail, 1997, ISBN1-85242-553-9, ISBN978-1-85242-553-1. (With Helena Reckitt, co-editor.)
Going through the motions and becoming other. (With Michael Uwemedimo, co-author). In: Chanan, Michael, (ed.) Visible evidence. Wallflower Press, 2007. London, UK. (In Press)
History and Histrionics: Vision Machine's Digital Poetics. (With Michael Uwemedimo, co-author). In: Marchessault, Janine, and Lord, Susan, (eds.) Fluid screens, expanded cinema. University of Toronto Press, 2007, Toronto, Canada, pp. 167–183. ISBN978-0-8020-9297-7.
Show of force: a cinema-séance of power and violence in Sumatra's plantation belt. (With Michael Uwemedimo, co-author). In Critical Quarterly, Volume 51, No 1, April 2009, pp. 84–110. Edited by: Colin MacCabe. Blackwell Publishing, 2009. ISSN 0011-1562.
Killer Images: Documentary Film, Memory and the Performance of Violence. (With Joram Ten Brink, co-author). Columbia University Press (Feb 28, 2013), ISBN0231163347, ISBN978-0231163347
