Listen to The End
Listen to The End
- Date
- Feb 16th 2025
- With
- Joshua Oppenheimer, George MacKay moderated by Aida Baghernejad
A follow-up to his extraordinary and harrowing diptych around the horrors of Indonesia’s past, "The Act of Killing" and "The Look of Silence", "The End" might suggest a radical departure for visionary director Joshua Oppenheimer. But this delightful, apocalyptic musical speaks to those films’ same concerns: the evil we can do to each other, and the lies we must tell to maintain a sense of morality. As our planet wrestles with new climate catastrophes and people the world over are suffering their consequences, few films will ring as timely and urgent as "The End". In this in-depth talk, Oppenheimer delves into the film’s production, his vision for storytelling and how the musical genre uniquely conveys both vulnerability and hope.
Joshua Oppenheimer
Two-time Oscar® nominee Joshua Oppenheimer’s work has moved from fiction to documentary and back again. His early fiction shorts won top honors at the Chicago, Telluride, and San Francisco film festivals. His debut feature, the musical documentary-fiction hybrid, The Act of Killing, was named Film of the Year in 2013 by the Guardian and the Sight and Sound Film Poll, and won 72 awards, including a European Film Award, a BAFTA, an Asia Pacific Screen Award, a Berlinale Audience Award, and the Guardian Film Award for Best Film. His second film, The Look of Silence, premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won five awards, including the Grand Jury Prize. Since then, The Look of Silence has received 72 awards, including an Independent Spirit Award, a Gotham Award. In response to public discussion around The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, the US government has declassified 30,000 previously secret files detailing America’s complicity in the Indonesian genocide. Cinema Eye Honors named Joshua Oppenheimer a decade-defining filmmaker in 2016, and both his films as decade-defining films. In 2014, Oppenheimer was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (popularly known as the ‘genius grant’). Joshua Oppenheimer was the 2017 Guest Director of the Telluride Film Festival, 2017 Tribute at the Sarajevo Festival Festival, centerpiece of The Act of Killing retrospective at 2016 San Sebastian Film Festival, winner of the City of Cologne’s 2016 Phoenix Prize, and served on the jury of the 2016 Venice
Film Festival (main competition). Joshua Oppenheimer is a partner at Final Cut for Real ApS in Copenhagen.
George MacKay
British actor George MacKay is considered one of the UK’s most exciting and prolific talents, crafting a career across film, television, and theatre. George's film career began at the tender age of 10 in P.J Hogan’s PETER PAN. He has since starred in numerous critically acclaimed, award-winning productions for which he has gained wide recognition, including a BAFTA Rising Star nomination in 2017 and a lead role in the multi-award-winning film 1917 from writer-director Sam Mendes. Most recently, George can be seen in Joshua Oppenheimer’s golden-age musical about the last human family in a post-apocalyptic world, alongside Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton. The film premiered at 2024’s Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and San Sebastian International Film Festival.
Aida Baghernejad
Aida Baghernejad is an award winning culture critic based in Berlin. Her work has been published in various national and international media outlets such as DLF Kultur or The Guardian, and focuses on popular culture and its intersections with the political. Last summer, she spent five months in the US as a Thomas Mann Fellow to investigate the intersections between pop culture and the political sphere. She usually lives in Berlin, sometimes in London, but mostly on the internet.
© Katharina Poblotzki