This week will be the last we’ll be accepting donations for the 2015 True Life Fund, our annual fundraiser benefiting a subject of a documentary film. This year the fund is supporting Adi Rukun of The Look of Silence. Over the next few days, we’ll be asking one final time for you to consider making a contribution, which you can do on our website here.
Joshua Oppenheimer’s new film is momentous in several inseparable dimensions. Politically, it is proving decisive in overturning the secrets and lies that continue to surround Indonesia’s genocidal anti-communist purges of 1965-66, atrocities supported by the United States as Cold War statecraft. Aesthetically, it constitutes a deeply poetic and haunting representation of the effect of decades’ of routine trauma and implicit terror. Yet both of these triumphs rest on a personal foundation, the story of one man who has lived his entire life in the shadow of a murdered brother and finally decides to risk everything to free his family from this prison of fear.
Adi Rukun’s screen presence doesn’t conform to typical reassuring notions of the heroic. Calm, powerfully empathetic and deeply wounded, he gradually but decisively confronts the perpetrators responsible for the crimes against his family and so many others. These killers have remained both powerful and grotesquely triumphant for nearly 50 years, making these confrontations unprecedented in Indonesian history. Adi’s demand for the truth provides a compelling example of humanity’s capacity for resilience in the face of unfathomable horror.
The men who killed Adi’s brother lived all around him, as part of his community. As a result, the release of The Look of Silence has forced Adi to relocate his family. In establishing a new life for himself, his parents and his children, Adi is now finalizing plans to open a brick-and-mortar optometry business in his new community. True/False could not be prouder to help support this man and say thank you for his willingness to share his story with the world. If you haven’t already, please consider joining us in donating to the True Life Fund and supporting this cause. Every little bit means something.