Often that included squads killing their neighbors or those they knew. Estimates put the death toll at 1 million.

At the request of victims' families, filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer has been confronting the now elderly death-squad members since 2003. However, since the failed coup, a generation of Indonesians have been taught that the killings were warranted, and the death-squad members have been regarded as heroes.

This led to Oppenheimer making the Oscar-nominated 2012 film "The Act of Killing." To expose the atrocities committed within a nation where those in power deemed it lawful, Oppenheimer gained the trust of some of the most high-ranking members of the death squads and persuaded them to reenact their killings in the style of Hollywood genres, like a black-and-white film noir or musical number.