It was all a bit of a lark, until someone tried to ban American films, and the gangsters' business slumped. As he grew older, he moved from cinema tickets into petty smuggling and illegal gambling, and soon he came to the attention of men like Ibrahim Sinik, a newspaper publisher and paramilitary gang boss. Mr Sinik decided who got killed in Medan and who should merely be shaken down for money. He needed protection, and the young film buff was just the guy to provide it.

He is reckoned to have murdered at least 1,000 people with his own hands, and soon had his own gang known as the Frog Squad. When, at last, the killing came to an end in 1968, he moved into organising political muscle, clearing land for illegal logging. And there, in humanity's dark shadows, he might have remained, were it not for the fact that in 2005, exactly 40 years after the genocide began, he met an idealistic young American-born documentary-maker named Joshua Oppenheimer. Thus began the second life of Anwar Congo.

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