User Reviews

I saw this film at the 2005 Hot Docs festival in Toronto. I saw two other films on the same day about "children in peril" but none were more horrifying than this one. Northern Uganda has been caught up in civil war for almost twenty years. The rebels of the "Lord's Resistance Army" make it their primary tactic to kidnap children from local villages, forcing them to fight in their army. Children as young as 8 are taught to kill with guns and knives, and those who don't share in the atrocities are killed themselves, often by other conscripted children.

Catholic relief agency Caritas is running a reintegration centre for those children who manage to escape the rebel army. It is a formidable challenge. Often the children have physical injuries, either sustained in battle or in their harrowing escapes. The mental damage is much harder to repair. They often have nightmares, and are terrified of being re-abducted. Their families are suspicious of them, and are also afraid of being targeted again by the rebels. In these circumstances, the social workers and doctors at the centre have their hands full.

We meet Jennifer, 14, who spent five years with the Lord's Resistance Army, fighting government troops and terrorizing civilians, all the while being raped regularly as a commander's concubine. And Opio, just 8 years old, describing how he bashed in a man's skull with a rifle butt. Then there is sensitive Kelama, 13, who was forced to kill a woman in front of her child and who now can't stop dreaming about her. All these children have a long road ahead of them, first reintegrating with their families and communities, and then hoping that the rebels don't return for them.

It's difficult to "rate" films like this, because they don't really function as pieces of art. Instead, they fulfill another aspect of the documentary's role, that of bearing witness. In that sense, this film is a clear-eyed look at some of the most horrifying crimes against children ever perpetrated. By making children do their killing for them, the so-called "Lord's Resistance Army" have killed the childhoods of these children. As they piece together the shreds of their humanity, they are no longer children. What they will become is a mystery.

As said in the other comment, it is rather difficult to rate a movie like this as a piece of art, but it has nevertheless a role as a witness of the crimes described.

As such it is extremely important, especially in a case like this, when it is about a civil war most of us don't know about and which is probably one of the most horrifying. (By a group of experts it has been named the second worst "forgotten humanitarian emergency" in the world, right after the conflict in Congo) The war between government troops and the "Lord Resistance Army" is now ongoing for more then 19 years. While the "Lord Resistance Army" has never stated any clear political aims, they are terrorizing the population mainly (but by far not only) of the so called "Acholiland" (named by the Acholi people) for two decades now. Their methods include the mutilation and slaughtering of the people but also the kidnapping of children who are then forced to kill as soldiers for them. Since the outbreak of the conflict in 1987 there have been killed more then 12,000 people directly by troops of the "Lord Resistance Army", not to forget about the thousands of people mutilated, raped or just made homeless refuges. Nearly two million civilians have been forced to leave their homes.

The movie mainly concentrates on the role of children in this conflict, who get kidnapped by the "Lord Resistance Army". They are made "child soldiers" and are forced to kill and mutilate other civilians, often children or even family members. Some of them can finally flee from the conflict and are in a lucky case then taken up in a Caritas lead home for kidnapped children. The movie follows mainly 3 of these child's, showing how they try to reintegrate in their society and forget about the war. Most of them will probably never succeed in both, not at least because the country is still dominated by the conflict. Their families are often afraid of them, telling stories about child soldiers having returned and then killed family members. They are either accepted at home, nor in the public, where they are equally feared and afraid themselves, since there is always the threat that the "Lord Resistance Army" could come back and kidnap them again or just kill them and their families.

Since there are no interests or causalities of western countries involved in this conflict, there is little or no media coverage. If you want to get an impression about the things happening in Uganda since the outbreak of the war two decades ago, you should watch this movie.

I have done research with former child soldiers in Sierra Leone, and I teach courses on youth and conflict. I use this film in my class because it is one of the few out there to present the complexity of reintegration for former child soldiers from the point of view of those affected, rather than from the point of view of Westerners trying to help them. The stories are powerfully effecting, so there is no need for preaching. The four children profiled have vastly different post-abduction experiences and that allows us to question the notion that once children are demobilized it is simply a matter of returning them to their pre-war setting for reintegration to take place. Some of the themes are: the danger of re-abduction, the importance of ritual and ceremony, the importance of religion, the different experiences of girls, and the fact that some families don't accept these children back while others do ecstatically.

I've found this documentary excellent at starting conversations in the classroom.