The Act of Killing’s co-director will not give up anonymity to attend Oscars

The co-director of Oscar-nominated documentary The Act Of Killing has vowed to stay away from the glitzy Hollywood ceremony to maintain his anonymity. The film documents mass killings in Indonesia which followed a failed coup in 1965 and it was directed by American moviemaker Joshua Oppenheimer and Christine Cynn, as well as an anonymous co-director, who has chosen not to reveal his name amid fears of reprisals.
The Act of Killing is nominated for an Academy Award in the Documentary Feature category, but the anonymous Indonesian moviemaker, who spent eight years working on the project, is adamant he will stay away from the ceremony in Los Angeles to protect his identity.
He tells Britain’s The Independent newspaper, “It is not possible for me to go to the Oscars, it is too much publicity and it is not really safe for me to be openly seen as the co-director of the film. I’m not the kind of person that likes to brag about my achievement… anonymity suits my personality… We thought about what should be written – our real names? A pseudonym? – and we decided it best to remain anonymous because actually we didn’t know what would happen.”