Adi Rukun was born in 1968 in Serdang Bedagai, North Sumatra, the youngest of eight children. He later moved to Medan and is the main character in Joshua Oppenheimer's 2014 documentary film The Look of Silence. From the confessions of the mass murderers in Oppenheimer's films and also from Amir Hasan's 1994 book Embun Berdarah (Bloody Dew), which narrates in detail how the author killed communists around 1965, Adi found out how his eldest brother was killed. Amir Hasan, one of the killers of Adi's brother, wrote the book as a historical record of his ‘heroic acts’ in murdering communists. In Oppenheimer's film, Amir claims the book is ‘important for people who continue their higher education’. Amir also drew illustrations in the book and gave a copy of this book to Oppenheimer, who subsequently lent it to Adi.