Seite - 93 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 03/02

93 JRFM 2018, 4/1 CALL FOR PAPERS Trauma, Memory and Religion Representing Memories of Killing in Film In the last few years, two influential films were released that dealt with the memories of men who had killed people a very long time ago. although Das radikal Böse (de/aU stefan ruzowitzky, d 2013) and The Act of Killing (Josh- ua oppenheimer, No/dK/GB 2012) re-enact massacres performed in countries distant from each other, the works show astonishing similarities. In both films the killers were haunted by images popping up in their nightmares, depicting the angst and despair of their victims. is this kind of reaction by the killers a universal human phenomenon when faced with such horrible events? or is it a cinematic device to express the sense of guilt? how is the memory of the trau- matic experience of killing represented in film? Das radikal Böse, which won an award at the Jerusalem film festival in 2014, focuses on the question how ordinary German soldiers could become the murderers of Jewish civilians, including men, women and children. during their military campaigns in eastern europe in 1941 and 1942 they killed two millions people with rifles and pistols. The Act of Killing received the Bafta film award for the best documentary in 2014. it uses the technique of role-playing to allow the feelings of the mur- derers to come to the surface. two years later, Joshua oppenheimer made a second film, The Look of Silence (NO/DK/GB 2014), in which he recaptures the same killings but from the perspective of the victims. Both in Das radikal Böse and in The Act of Killing a religious dimension is discernable, in which apparently a certain difference comes to light: depending on the religion tradition, different strategies to express the responsibility of the killers are presented. in Das radikal Böse, which is embedded in the Protestant Lutheran tradition, the actors speak about feeling guilty, while in The Act of Killing the actors, mostly Muslim indonesians who also have some roots in lo- cal indigenous religions, relate to God’s inevitable punishment. Which role does