I'm trying to understand how do we tell lies to ourselves to justify what we've done and what are the consequences of those lies? But actually maybe I also recognize that in turning empathy into a practice for many years,… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
When you approach someone as a human being, truly and try to be as open as safety allows, some of the bigger reenactments with a whole army of paramilitary people participating, I couldn't say my feelings openly in front of… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
There's a tradition of reenactment in documentary which is about sort of illustrating what the past might have been like. — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
I always have said, you know it's not for me to forgive or to condemn, I'm a filmmaker. — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
I think we create our world through stories. We use storytelling to escape or protect ourselves from the unimaginable and the horrible - from the real, in a way. It's like white light - if you put everyday reality through a prism you get this rainbow of colors that you couldn't see before. I'm interested in exploring the world to… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share
We can distance ourselves from the reality of what we did through storytelling. — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
In a fiction film, we know at some level we've suspended disbelief. In a documentary, we know that we're watching a drama unfold in… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
I really believe that the past is beyond our grasp and what is essential about the past is something unspeakable. — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
Films can't change the society, they can simply open the space for the discussion which can lead to social change and can start new… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
A podium is something you walk up to, you say what you want to say and when you're finished, you leave. — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
Each and every perpetrator was boastful, usually they would invite me to the places where they killed and I would of course accept those… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
After the Dutch left Indonesia, after the Indonesians got loose in 1945, the freemen were not as widely used, but then they went through… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
The whole tradition of cinema is dominated, really, by films about good guys versus bad guys, good versus evil. But we have very few… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
