Joshua Oppenheimer: Why Filmmakers Shouldn't Chase Impact

Welcome to the Cinema of Change podcast with Tobias Deml and Robert Rippberger. Cinema of Change is a magazine and community that challenges the conventions of film and its ability to effect change in the world.

Joshua Lincoln Oppenheimer was born in 1974 in Austin, Texas. He is a two-time Oscar-nominated American film director based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Oppenheimer has a Bachelor of Arts-degree summa cum laude in filmmaking from Harvard University and a PhD from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts in London.

Oppenheimer spent 12 years in Indonesia and returned with two internationally praised documentaries, The Act of Killing (2012) & The Look of Silence (2014), both challenged the documentary film form and shed new light on the minds behind The Indonesian Genocide of 1965-1966.

  • 01:30 How films can change both the world and the people in and behind them.
  • 02:20 - The true impact of films
  • 07:05 The psychology of perpetrators
  • 10:40 What screenwriters and narrative filmmakers can learn about real villains
  • 12:20 Advice to narrative filmmakers to have their films make more impact
  • 15:15 Protecting the artist from his/her impact
  • 19:00 On film criticism and understanding how a film works on an audience
  • 20:35 On motivation, risk-taking and finding your path

We hope you find the conversation interesting and evocative. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

Be the change that you want to see in the world. Then, turn it into cinema.

Om Podcasten

Media has always played an important role around the globe. We live in a world of influence and social change - and as filmmakers, we want to contribute to a better world. The question is: How can we make better films that accelerate progress and help people become stronger critical thinkers? How can we expose issues that are important, and publish content that challenges popular conceptions? These podcasts along with the cinema of change magazine take a multidisciplinary approach and interviews filmmakers, psychologists, researchers and academics. It analyzes success stories of films that had an impact, and portrays companies that are following this path. Cinema of Change is a platform to bring impact filmmakers together to share ideas and to challenge our assumptions through debate.