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Joshua Lincoln Oppenheimer (born September 23, 1974) is an American film director based in Copenhagen, Denmark.[1][2] He is known for his Oscar-nominated films The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014). Oppenheimer was a 1997 Marshall Scholar[3] and a 2014 recipient of the MacArthur fellowship.[4]
Joshua Oppenheimer | |
|---|---|
 Oppenheimer at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival | |
| Born | Joshua Lincoln Oppenheimer September 23, 1974 Austin, Texas, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Harvard College (B.A.) Central Saint Martins (Ph.D.) |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Years active | 1995–present |
| Notable work | The Act of Killing The Look of Silence |
| Awards | MacArthur Fellowship Marshall Scholarship BAFTA European Film Award Grand Jury Prize (Venice Film Festival) |
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Oppenheimer was born to a Jewish family,[5] in Austin, Texas, and grew up in and around Washington, D.C., and Santa Fe, New Mexico.[6] He received a Bachelor of Arts (BA) summa cum laude in film-making from Harvard University and a PhD from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London, while studying on a Marshall Scholarship. He is Professor of Film at the University of Westminster.
His first film The Entire History of the Louisiana Purchase (1997) won a Gold Hugo from the Chicago International Film Festival (1998).[7]
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]
Oppenheimer's next film, The Look of Silence (2014), is a companion piece to The Act of Killing. It was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 88th Academy Awards. It was screened in competition at the 71st Venice International Film Festival[13][14] and won the Grand Jury Prize, the International Film Critics Award (FIPRESCI), the Italian online critics award (Mouse d'Oro), the European Film Critics Award (F.E.D.E.O.R.A.) for the Best Film of Venezia 71, as well as the Human Rights Nights Award.[15] Since then, it has gone on to win a further 70 international awards, including an Independent Spirit Award, an IDA Award for Best Documentary, a Gotham Award for Best Documentary, and three Cinema Eye Honors, including Best Film and Best Director. Cinema Eye Honors named him a decade-defining filmmaker in 2016, and both his films as decade-defining films.
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]
In 2021, film production company Neon announced Oppenheimer would direct a narrative feature film, a post-apocalyptic musical titled The End.[21] The film premiered at the 51st Telluride Film Festival on 31 August 2024, and was screened in the Special Presentations program at the Toronto International Film Festival on 6 September 2024.[22] It stars Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, George MacKay, Moses Ingram, Bronagh Gallagher, and others.[23]
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Oppenheimer is openly gay and lives with his partner Shu in Copenhagen, Denmark.[24]
| Year | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Hugh | Short film |
| 1996 | These Places We've Learned to Call Home | Short |
| 1997 | The Challenge of Manufacturing | Short |
| 1997 | The Entire History of the Louisiana Purchase | Short |
| 2003 | The Globalisation Tapes | 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 | Short |
| 2003 | Market Update | Short |
| 2004 | Postcard from Sun City, Arizona | Short |
| 2004 | Muzak: a tool of management | Short |
| 2007 | Show of Force | Installation |
| 2012 | The Act of Killing | Documentary film |
| 2014 | The Look of Silence | Documentary |
| 2024 | The End | Musical |
- Acting on AIDS: Sex, Drugs & Politics (Acting on AIDS). London & New York: Serpent's Tail, 1997, ISBN 1-85242-553-9, ISBN 978-1-85242-553-1. (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. ISBN 978-0-8020-9297-7.
- 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), ISBN 0231163347, ISBN 978-0231163347
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