I thought I'd hate this film--another "60-minutes"-like guilt-trip about child soldiers. But it was something else--a personal story, an adventure, a love story, etc. The camera-work and editing were original and very good--all done in a low-budget way. Art over technology!
The story itself felt very real even though it is also very classic and very generic: --war-time, challenge, and hope of redemption. She gets pregnant, has to return home, things get worse before they get better, etc. It reminds me of a Brazilian film I saw about street kids back in the 1980s or 1990s--"Pixote." The homeless street kids in Brazil didn't have AK47 guns, but their lives followed a similar story. "Streetwise" an American documentary about homeless teenagers in Seattle also has similar stories--growing up too fast. Sad to think this is true all over, which also makes it so classic. Faulkner's novel "LIGHT IN AUGUST" comes to mind too--many parallels. And then there are the ongoing drone-strikes the US does all over the world--more disrupted lives, more rebels--and more movies...
The story itself felt very real even though it is also very classic and very generic: --war-time, challenge, and hope of redemption. She gets pregnant, has to return home, things get worse before they get better, etc. It reminds me of a Brazilian film I saw about street kids back in the 1980s or 1990s--"Pixote." The homeless street kids in Brazil didn't have AK47 guns, but their lives followed a similar story. "Streetwise" an American documentary about homeless teenagers in Seattle also has similar stories--growing up too fast. Sad to think this is true all over, which also makes it so classic. Faulkner's novel "LIGHT IN AUGUST" comes to mind too--many parallels. And then there are the ongoing drone-strikes the US does all over the world--more disrupted lives, more rebels--and more movies...