War Witch

Komona is twelve. An armed group comes to her village and takes the children. They give her a gun and, as her first task, tell her to shoot her own parents. She does it. They walk through the forest. Komona starts seeing the dead; white figures appear before anyone comes near, and so she knows about ambushes in advance. The commander counts this a power and calls her a witch. She is protected and she is used. At fourteen she is pregnant, and she builds the story by telling it to the child she is carrying. Kim Nguyen writes and directs. Rachel Mwanza plays Komona; Serge Kanyinda and Alain Lino Mic Eli Bastien are in the cast. It is a Canadian production and was shot in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rachel Mwanza had been living on the streets in Kinshasa before the film and had no acting experience. Mwanza won the best actress award at the Berlin Film Festival for the part. The film was nominated for the Oscar for best foreign language film. The matter it treats is child soldiering; the film gives it not through information but through one child's view. The narrative takes the supernatural element as real and offers no explanation. The film does not shy from the violence but does not extend the scenes. The narrative carries a love line too and that is its only soft place. Its limit is the watching; the subject is heavy, the narrative offers no hope, and some scenes are hard to bear. Who it is for: viewers who like social drama and narratives set in Africa. Who it is not for: it is shattering, hard, and the ending bitter.