The Act of Killing
The Act of Killing (Indonesian: Jagal, meaning "Butcher") is a 2012 documentary film about individuals who participated in the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966. The film is directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, and co-directed by Christine Cynn and an anonymous Indonesian.[4][5] A co-production between Denmark, Norway and the United Kingdom, it is presented by Final Cut for Real in Denmark and produced by Signe Byrge Sørensen, with Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Joram ten Brink and Andre Singer in executive producer roles. It is a Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) project of the University of Westminster.
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Running time | 122 minutes[1] 167 minutes (director's cut) |
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Language | Indonesian |
Budget | $1 million[2] |
Box office | $722,714[3] |
The Act of Killing won the 2013 European Film Award for Best Documentary, the Asia Pacific Screen Award, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 86th Academy Awards.[6] It also won best documentary at the 67th British Academy Film Awards. In accepting, Oppenheimer said that the United States and the United Kingdom have "collective responsibility" for "participating in and ignoring" the crimes,[7] which was omitted from the video BAFTA posted online.[8] This participation has been extensively documented by numerous professional historians, journalists and an international tribunal,[14] and documents declassified in 2021 indicate that the UK was even more closely involved than previously thought.[15] After a screening for US Congress members, Oppenheimer demanded that the US acknowledge its role in the killings.[16]
The Indonesian government responded negatively; its presidential spokesman on foreign affairs, Teuku Faizasyah, claimed that the film is misleading with respect to its portrayal of the country.[17]
A companion film, The Look of Silence, was released in 2014.[18] The film was ranked 19th on a list of the best documentaries ever made in a 2015 poll by the British Film Institute.[19] In 2016, it was named the 14th greatest film released since 2000 by a poll of critics published by the BBC.[20]
Summary
Following the 1965 30 September Movement, Indonesian president Sukarno was overthrown by General Suharto, who created a regime notable for killing over one million alleged communists, comprising of Sukarno's supporters, members of the Communist Party of Indonesia, labor and farming unions, intellectuals, and Chinese Indonesians. Backed by the United States, the responsible paramilitary groups and gangsters, the biggest one being Pancasila Youth, has since gained power throughout the country.
The Act of Killing is directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, who with his crew in Medan, North Sumatra, asks some of the gangsters to re-enact their killings. The film's first subjects, Anwar Congo and Herman Koto, used to sell black market tickets outside of the cinema Medan Bioscoop. During the rise of communism in Indonesia, American films were restricted, and with no income they began working for a death squad as part of the genocide. Inspired by film noir films, killing methods include strangulation, stabbing, and throwing people into rivers. Overall, Congo estimates the death count on his hands as 1,000. Pancasila Youth expresses will to stop the spread of neocommunism and far-leftism in Indonesia, and is backed by high-ranking government members, including then-vice president Jusuf Kalla. Feared by many civilians, the ethnic Chinese who were not killed continues to have their money extorted by the gangsters.
Soon, the film introduces Adi Zulkadry, a friend of Congo who also participated in the genocide. They discussed Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI (1984), a film propagating that the 30 September Movement was perpetrated by the communists, and glorifying the genocide. While Congo praised the film for validating his acts, Zulkadry is skeptical of its plot and deems the genocide cruel. In a discussion with Oppenheimer, he denies it being a war crime, as the same holds true for the Iraq War and the genocide of Native Americans. Congo then detailed his nightmares following the genocide, where he would envision the spirits of his victims. Zulkadry, who felt no remorse, said they were merely nerve issues. Ibrahim Sinik and Soduaon Siregar, journalists of Medan Pos who covered the genocide, showed support but denied direct participation.
Midway through The Act of Killing, the Indonesian Workers and Employers Party nominated Koto to earn a seat in the province's Regional Representative Council election, though he lost. Members of the council, as well as high-ranking government officials, are also leaders of Pancasila Youth factions, allowing them to commit corruption, election rigging, and land clearing for developers. The group earns income in the modern era by criminal activities like gambling and drug smuggling. The film also depicts their objectification of women, at one point boasting about raping teenage girls and Gerwani members during the genocide.
During the re-enactments, titled Arsan dan Aminah (Indonesian: Arsan and Aminah) some of the gangsters including Zulkadry expressed caution so as to not create scenes potentially destroying their reputation as heroes. While it initially focuses on the killings, as Congo begins discussing his nightmares, the crew begin trying to depict those. After filming the Pancasila Youth members chant their spirit in killing and mutilating communists, they continue to a scene where the alleged communist families were being evicted and tortured, then have their houses burned. Seeing the crying children, Congo expresses pity, which exacerbated as he portrayed a victim in another scene, which sent him on a panic attack, sensing a glimpse of what his victim felt. He thinks he has sinned, and later returns to a place he frequently killed people, retching at his own descriptions.
Production
Filming
The Act of Killing came to be when Oppenheimer and co-director Christine Cynn went to a Belgian-owned palm plantation nearby Medan, where the female workers were asked to spray the plant killer herbicide to their body; the film that came out of it, The Globalisation Tapes (2003), documents their worries on making a union against the system because their grandparents were alleged pro-communists killed during the genocide. As focus on the genocide was apparent, people in the military often confiscated their equipment and detained the duo. Before they could leave Indonesia, the workers suggested that they film the genocide's perpetrators. Despite their caution, the people they met were overweening and proudful on their acts. Starting in late 2004 with the help of death squad leader Amir Hasan, they were able to contact many of his kind, moving up the ranks of those involved, incuding retired military officers in capital city Jakarta and two retired officers of the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States, and met Congo in Medan in 2005 as his 41st interviewee.[21][22][23] The film's Indonesian co-director began working in 2004 with a one-month goal, but eventually sticked throughout the entire process.[23]
The film was shot mostly between 2005 and 2011. In several interviews, he described his feeling listening to the perpetrators as if "I'd wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust only to find the Nazis still in power". It took filming around five or ten subjects that Oppenheimer could openly discuss the genocide, and when he ideated that he would let them re-enact their acts while filming their thoughts on it "to create perhaps a new form of documentary, a kind of documentary of the imagination". The subjects understood that the re-enactments will not be a separate film, and have signed forms indicating such.[24][22] Congo was a particular point of interest to Oppenheimer because he "could see his pain", believing that Congo's openness to his acts were in response to self-soothing his trauma, trying to deny any wrongdoing.[25] Because different death squads within Pancasila Youth dislike each other, the film only depicts Congo's squad (Pasukan Kodok) to avoid conflicts. Henceforth, he met Koto, Zulkadry, and Sinik; as a filmmaker and Anwar's killing advisor, Sinik gave input on the re-enactments.[22][23]
Oppenheimer handled half of the cinematography,[26] with Lars Kree, Carlos Arango de Montis, and the Indonesian co-director doing the rest. He let the killers to use the cameras to document the behind-the-scenes process of their re-enactments. Long takes were preferred to depict entire events, and the crew would not speak much as it records. The entire behind-the-scenes process of the re-enactments were thus filmed to further accomodate the film's investigative comprehesiveness. Dailies of the re-enactments were shown to the subjects as soon as possible, hence the reaction scenes in the film. The gangster re-enactment's set was based upon the actual office where the murders occurred, and was entirely improvised.[23] The goldish sculpture seen prominently throughout the film was a former restaurant that closed in 1997;[26] it was filmed last and represents Congo's ambiguous fever dream.[23]
Filmed in 2009,[27] the re-enactments were funded by the filmmakers, but some scenes were made by Congo's squad, with production values Oppenheimer called "awful". Despite Oppenheimer's crew having no experience in fiction, they consulted Congo for authenticity. The "high production values" allowed for the re-enactments to level the non-fiction scenes, so that by the final act of The Act of Killing, the re-enactments can dominate: "it stops really being a documentary at all, and becomes a kind of fever dream" from Anwar's mind. The sound was edited at the soap opera studio of TVRI, Indonesia's state television network also dominated by gangsters.[24] The reason Koto was given feminine costume was because his theater "group was like the Globe Theatre [...], all the roles were played by men, and Herman always played the women's roles." The scene where Congo's neighbor admitted having his stepfather killed was not on Oppenheimer and his Indonesian co-director's attention as they were changing tapes; Oppenheimer expressed regret for missing out on it and allowing his portayal as a tortured victim, where he had a breakdown. He died two years after filming.[27]
Amid filming, Oppenheimer traveled to Jakarta to show the videos filmed thus far to genocide survivors and human rights advocates, who deemed his findings important and crucial to continue on.[22] Zulkadry's introduction to the film came midway through filming, with the Indonesian production manager having met him previously in Jakarta. Oppenheimer's vision for the film changed with his arrival, who openly condemned the killings but also expressed caution on the re-enactment's potential in reshaping Indonesian history. During one of the scenes, Zulkadry asked for the film to be discontinued, alleging that Oppenheimer is a communist. With the Indonesian crew in fear, Oppenheimer refuted Adi's claims.[28] He felt traumatized by the overall filming and at one point collapsed in exhaustion; he would often return to London healing from nightmares and insomnia. It stemmed from a re-enactment where Congo mutilates a teddy bear symbolizing a girl, then telling Koto, "you tried to bribe me with your daughter. See? You're the barbaric one, not me."[lower-alpha 1][29]
The Indonesian crew also faced similar emotions which they faced by bonding with each other, though some stepped down midway through filming.[30] As the filming progresses, Oppenheimer could be more open on his perspectives with Zulkadry, who he deems hypocritical, and Congo.[27] He and Congo had bonded during filming; during the mutilation re-enactment, Congo noticed him crying and asking if they must stop.[29] Thus, when Congo retched in the penultimate scene, Oppenheimer chose not to reassure him so as to not be "dishonest"; instead he told him the film he envisioned to release, to which Congo responded (translated by Oppenheimer), "Okay, if that's what it is, I understand, I'm not angry, I want to see it." Oppenheimer gave him a DVD "when it's safe to do so".[27] Richard Whittaker of The Austin Chronicle concluded that in creating the film, he "paid a psychic toll".[21]
Post-filming
Filmmakers Werner Herzog and Errol Morris were credited as executive producers for The Act of Killing. At an airport in London, another executive producer André Singer directed Oppenheimer to Herzog, whom he has also worked with, to preview eight minutes of the film; he immediately displayed interest. Several months later, Herzog via telephone was angered by Oppenheimer trying to shorten the film, intendedly to make it accessible for a wide audience and film festivals. He then agreed for a trimmed version, but wanted to assist editing so as to not remove crucial elements (he marked scenes in the film by three levels of importance), and analyzed three or four rough cuts with Oppenheimer.[29] Herzog constantly reassured the worrisome Oppenheimer on the quality of the film, saying "Don't be a coward now. [...] If you don't put the end in here, you have lived in vain."[24] Morris, meanwhile, had known Oppenheimer for 20 years, and saw the early clips circa 2010 and liked the three cuts presented, running est. 90, 120, and 150 minutes.[31]
The editing team was led by Niels Pagh Andersen, accompanied by Charlotte Munch Bengtsen, Ariadna Fatjó-Vilas Mestre, Janus Billeskov Jansen, and Mariko Montpetit,[23] using the software Final Cut Pro.[32] Oppenheimer worked with two "junior editors" for a year sifting through 35 hours of footage, when Andersen joined midway; they then established Congo as the main subject, thus revolving his psychological journey throughout the film. He and Oppenheimer agreed that Anwar represents hope and honesty, whereas characters like Zulkadry represents denial. Oppenheimer himself wanted the film to depict his bravery to speak up, while also not ignoring his history. In order to give an air of humanism around him, footage of the genocide survivors were omitted to not dilate the evil feel.[23][33] Color grading was done by Tom Chr. Lilletvedt, who also did visual effects with Christopher Berge Hove.[32] The Numbers estimated its budget to be at US$1 million.[34]
Many of the Indonesians who worked on the film are not credited by name, instead appearing as "Anonymous", for fear of legal and extrajudicial punishment for their participation. This was by their requests, which Oppenheimer respected; he also said he is open to them requesting letters of recommendation.[30] The Indonesian co-director noted that his fellow filmmaker friend was once questioned by a state official, who admitted making efforts to try uncover his identity. His ties with The Act of Killing is only known to friends, family, as well as several journalists and filmmakers.[35] Oppenheimer hoped that the climate surrounding the genocide gets better so that the film can be re-released with the Indonesian crew properly credited.[26]
Release
Coinciding with the release of the film's director's cut in 2013, a free BitTorrent Bundle of behind the scenes content was uploaded to the internet by the distributor.[36]
Because of the heated political climate in Indonesia, it is highly risky to submit the film to the Film Censorship Board, since the probabilty of it being banned would mean Indonesians can face charges for watching the film, and allowing paramilitary groups to heckle screenings. The film premiered in the country, screened by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) throughout late 2012 for filmmakers, authors, advocates, educators, and organizations for the genocide survivors. The positive reception prompted the assembly of a campaign team by some of them in collaboration with the film's production company Final Cut for Real on behalf of Partisipasi Indonesia.[37]
On 10 December, coinciding Human Rights Day, screenings were held in 50 venues across 30 cities, with an estimated 30 to 600 audiences per theatre. The venues ranged from a large multiplex theatre in Jakarta and universities, to the victims' mass grave and an isolated jungle The only screening that stopped midway was in Central Java upon police demand; another close call was committed by paramilitary groups.[37]
Reception
Critical response
The Act of Killing received widespread acclaim from critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 95% approval rating with an average rating of 8.8/10 based on 163 reviews. The website's consensus reads, "Raw, terrifying, and painfully difficult to watch, The Act of Killing offers a haunting testament to the edifying, confrontational power of documentary cinema."[38] On Metacritic, the film holds an average score of 91 out of 100, based on 33 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[39]
Nick Schager of The Village Voice called it a "masterpiece".[40] Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges called the film "an important exploration of the complex psychology of mass murderers" and wrote that "it is not the demonized, easily digestible caricature of a mass murderer that most disturbs us. It is the human being."[41] Award-winning filmmaker Ruhi Hamid said: "It is the most extraordinary film I have ever seen. It actually turns around what we think of as documentaries. ...an extraordinary record of a horrendous part of Indonesian history."[42]
In some quarters, Oppenheimer has been accused of treating his subjects in bad faith.[43] As far as their goal at the beginning was to glorify mass murder, Oppenheimer responds that could never have been his goal, therefore that side of them may have been betrayed.[44][45][46][47] In an interview with The Village Voice, Oppenheimer said: "When I was entrusted by this community of survivors to film these justifications, to film these boastings, I was trying to expose and interrogate the nature of impunity. Boasting about killing was the right material to do that with because it is a symptom of impunity."[48]
Australian National University Professor of Asian History and Politics Robert Cribb stated that the film lacks historical context.[49] In reply, Oppenheimer said that "the film is essentially not about what happened in 1965, but rather about a regime in which genocide has, paradoxically, been effaced [yet] celebrated – in order to keep the survivors terrified, the public brainwashed, and the perpetrators able to live with themselves... It never pretends to be an exhaustive account of the events of 1965. It seeks to understand the impact of the killing and terror today, on individuals and institutions."[50]
Bradley Simpson, historian at the University of Connecticut and director of the Indonesia/East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, states the "brilliant Oscar-nominated film" has prompted vigorous debate among Indonesians about the crimes and the need to hold responsible parties accountable, and suggests that it could have a similar effect in the United States, whose own role in the killings "has never officially been acknowledged, much less accounted for, though some of the relevant documents have been made available to the public."[51]
An Indonesian academic, Soe Tjen Marching, analyzed the film in relation to Hannah Arendt's theory of the banality of evil.[52]
The primary subjects in the film, Anwar Congo and Herman Koto, have seen the film and neither feels deceived, according to Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer says that upon watching the film Anwar Congo "started to cry...Tearfully, he told me: 'This is the film I expected. It's an honest film, a true film.' He said he was profoundly moved and will always remain loyal to it." Oppenheimer went on to say that in the call with Congo he also became down on himself saying "There is nothing left for me to do in life but to die". Oppenheimer seeing Congo so moved and almost ashamed for what he had done, said this to him. "You're only 70 years old, Anwar. You might live another 25 years. Whatever good you do in those years is not undermined by the awful things in your past." He felt it may have been cliche, but he felt it was honest and all he could manage to say to Congo.[53] A subsequent interview on Al Jazeera's program 101 East revealed that Anwar had misgivings about the film and the negative reaction to it in Indonesia, which was causing problems for him. He confided these concerns directly to Oppenheimer in an apparent Skype conversation displayed within the program.[54]
In 2015, the film was named as one of the top 50 films of the decade so far by The Guardian.[55]
Top ten lists
The Act of Killing has been named as one of the best films of 2013 by various critics:[56]
- 1st – Sight & Sound[57]
- 1st – The Guardian[58]
- 1st – LA Weekly
- 1st – Nick Schager, The A.V. Club
- 2nd – Mark Kermode, The Observer
- 3rd – David Edelstein, New York
- 3rd – David Sexton, London Evening Standard
- 4th – Eric Kohn, Indiewire
- 4th – People Magazine
- 7th – Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic
- 7th – A. A. Dowd, The A.V. Club
- 7th – David Chen, slashfilm.com[59]
- 8th – Sam Adams, The A.V. Club
- 8th – Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, The A.V. Club
- 8th – Richard Corliss, Time
- 10th – Time Out London
- 10th – Devindra Hardawar, slashfilm.com[59]
The Act of Killing was ranked 19th among all documentaries ever made in a 2015 poll by the British Film Institute,[19] as well as the 14th greatest film since 2000 in a 2016 critics' poll by BBC.[20] It was ranked 16th in The Guardian's Best Films of the 21st Century list.[60]
Awards and nominations
Notes
- Original: "Ini adalah satu tingkah yang biasanya buat orang yang ingin menyuap dengan anaknya. [...] Yang sebenarnya kamu lebih biadab."
See also
References
- "THE ACT OF KILLING (15)". Dogwoof Pictures. British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved 18 August 2013.
- "The Act of Killing (2012) – Box office / business". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 18 August 2013.
- "Act of Killing (2013)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 20 October 2013.
- Shoard, Catherine (14 September 2012). "The Act of Killing – review". The Guardian.
- Armstrong, Eric (5 July 2016). "Anonymous, the Act of Killing's Co-Director: "The Possibility of Violence Still Exists"". Slate.
- "Oscars: Main nominations 2014". BBC News. 16 January 2014. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
- Beaumont-Thomas, Ben (16 February 2014). Baftas 2014: The Act of Killing wins best documentary. The Guardian. Retrieved 16 February 2014.
- Macaulay, Scott (17 February 2014). The Act of Killing Wins Documentary BAFTA; Director Oppenheimer’s Speech Edited Online. Filmmaker. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- Robinson, Geoffrey B. (2018). The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965–66. Princeton University Press. pp. 206–207. ISBN 978-1-4008-8886-3.
In short, Western states were not innocent bystanders to unfolding domestic political events following the alleged coup, as so often claimed. On the contrary, starting almost immediately after October 1, the United States, the United Kingdom, and several of their allies set in motion a coordinated campaign to assist the Army in the political and physical destruction of the PKI and its affiliates, the removal of Sukarno and his closest associates from political power, their replacement by an Army elite led by Suharto, and the engineering of a seismic shift in Indonesia's foreign policy towards the West. They did this through backdoor political reassurances to Army leaders, a policy of official silence in the face of the mounting violence, a sophisticated international propaganda offensive, and the covert provision of material assistance to the Army and its allies. In all these ways, they helped to ensure that the campaign against the Left would continue unabated and its victims would ultimately number in the hundreds of thousands.
- Melvin, Jess (20 October 2017). "Telegrams confirm scale of US complicity in 1965 genocide". Indonesia at Melbourne. University of Melbourne. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
The new telegrams confirm the US actively encouraged and facilitated genocide in Indonesia to pursue its own political interests in the region, while propagating an explanation of the killings it knew to be untrue.
- Simpson, Bradley (2010). Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.–Indonesian Relations, 1960–1968. Stanford University Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-8047-7182-5.
Washington did everything in its power to encourage and facilitate the Army-led massacre of alleged PKI members, and U.S. officials worried only that the killing of the party's unarmed supporters might not go far enough, permitting Sukarno to return to power and frustrate the [Johnson] Administration's emerging plans for a post-Sukarno Indonesia. This was efficacious terror, an essential building block of the neoliberal policies that the West would attempt to impose on Indonesia after Sukarno's ouster.
- Bevins, Vincent (2020). The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World. PublicAffairs. p. 157. ISBN 978-1541742406.
The United States was part and parcel of the operation at every stage, starting well before the killing started, until the last body dropped and the last political prisoner emerged from jail, decades later, tortured, scarred, and bewildered.
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- Lashmar, Paul; Gilby, Nicholas; Oliver, James (17 October 2021). "Slaughter in Indonesia: Britain's secret propaganda war". The Observer.
- Sabarini, Prodita (16 February 2014). Director calls for US to acknowledge its role in 1965 killings. The Jakarta Post. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
- Josua Gantan (23 January 2014). "Indonesia Reacts to ‘Act of Killing’ Academy Nomination", The Jakarta Globe. Retrieved 27 May 2014
- Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (27 August 2014). "Act Of Killing sequel The Look Of Silence will hit theaters in 2015". A.V. Club. Retrieved 31 August 2014.
- "The Best Documentaries of All Time". British Film Institute. 21 December 2015. Retrieved 31 October 2016.
- "The 21st Century's 100 greatest films". BBC. 23 August 2016. Retrieved 31 October 2016.
- Whittaker, Richard (9 August 2013). "Making a 'Killing': Joshua Oppenheimer on the half-decade he spent filming for The Act of Killing". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved 19 December 2013.
- POV (14 January 2014). "Filmmaker Interview | The Act of Killing | POV | PBS". POV | American Documentary Inc. Retrieved 24 October 2023.
- "The Act of Killing press notes" (PDF). Cinephil. September 2013. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
- Fortune, Drew (30 July 2013). "Joshua Oppenheimer and Werner Herzog on The Act of Killing". The A.V. Club. The Onion, Inc. Retrieved 19 December 2013.
- Kinosian, Janet (18 February 2014). "Joshua Oppenheimer on 'The Act of Killing,' reconciliation". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 24 October 2023.
- Oppenheimer, Joshua; Herzog, Werner (7 January 2014). The Act of Killing (Blu-ray audio commentary). Drafthouse Films.
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- Joshua Oppenheimer on "The Act of Killing": The VICE Podcast 034, retrieved 24 October 2023
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- O'Brien, Rob (16 January 2014). "The quiet agony of filming 'The Act of Killing'". GlobalPost – via PRI.
- Raup, Jordan (23 February 2014). "Highlights From Werner Herzog, Errol Morris & Joshua Oppenheimer's Revealing Reddit AMA For 'The Act of Killing'". Retrieved 25 October 2023.
- The Act of Killing end credits
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- Armstrong, Eric (5 July 2016). ""The Possibility of Violence Still Exists"". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 24 October 2023.
- The Act of Killing extras Bundle
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- "The 10 best films of 2013, No 1 – The Act of Killing". 20 December 2013.
- "The /Filmcast's Top 10 Films of 2013 - /Film". Slashfilm.com. 29 December 2013. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
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