At the beginning of this moving documentary, a softly spoken voice says, ‘It’s difficult for people to believe our story’. For the last twenty years, a war has been raging in northern Uganda and there’s a generation who know nothing of a world without war. They live in a refugee camp protected by military guards while outside the fence hostilities continue. The children of the camp pick grains of rice out of the dust on the day the United Nations delivers food and relive stories worse than any horror film you could imagine.
Amidst unimaginable violence, these children’s lives continue, and ‘even the war cannot take the music away’. History is made when a group of children from a school in the northern war zone enter Uganda’s national music and dance competition, along with 20 000 other schools. As they sing and dance their way to the finals, they become much more than children living in a war zone. The children are able to see what peace looks like as they move to the rhythm of their ancestors. And we are able to glimpse the hope that survives in the lives of three of the 200 000 children that have been orphaned in Uganda. As the softly spoken narration says, ‘If we didn’t tell you, you wouldn’t know’.
This is the last film to screen at Somerville Auditorium as part of the Perth International Arts Festival. See it from 7-13 April, and make sure you bring a rug… and tissues.
Directed by Sean and Nix Fine, Rated PG
