A DOCUMENTARY about a bloody and troubling chapter of Indonesian history has been overlooked for an Oscar but is still being lauded as a milestone on the long path to reconciliation.
The Act of Killing, by US filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, won a BAFTA and had been critics' favourite for the Oscars.
The documentary invited Indonesian perpetrators of the 1965 state-sponsored anti-communist purge to re-enact their killings in chilling detail.
It's estimated that between 500,000 and one million people were killed in the surge of violence against supposed communists and sympathisers.
As the film shows, the unpunished killers have scant remorse, because as one of them points out, for now, he is on the right side of history.
Indonesian historian Asvi Warman Adam says the documentary is a watershed for throwing light on perpetrators, where others had only focused on victims.
Dr Asvi hopes the Oscar attention will finally stir the government into action.
"All other elements but the government have done more than enough to embrace this history and cope with it," he said.
Efforts towards redress began before the film, he says.
The national human rights commission did a four-year study, but despite evidence from hundreds of witnesses, the report was buried last year.
Calls for a formal apology were stifled by groups implicated in the killings, including the children of military veterans.
The University of Melbourne's Dr Katharine McGregor says Indonesia is at a stalemate on the issue.
With the end of his term fast approaching, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is unlikely to prioritise an apology.
And even as The Act of Killing scoops up awards across the globe, Indonesia has seen a resurgence in anti-communist crack downs.
"The pendulum on this issue is constantly swinging," Dr McGregor said.
"A key obstacle to a significant state effort to address this is the absence of a strong lobby group within the government or the population that would support an apology to former political prisoners, or further legal investigation."
Australian National University Professor Robert Cribb agrees the prospects for healing in the short-term aren't good.
"Two things may have to happen," he said.
"The original antagonisms have to disappear ... and society has to change enough so that the past really does seem to be a different country."
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