The Silent Army (Jean Van De Velde, 2008): Netherlands

Reviewed by Brian Livesay. Viewed at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre during the AFI Film Festival 2009.

This was a powerful and emotional film dealing with atrocities that are happening in various parts of Africa including the country of Uganda where this movie was filmed. The name Uganda is not used outright in the film for fear of reprisals from militants against the actors that star in the film. The director revealed that they used real Ugandan children and adults instead of established actors when they made the movie.

The opening segments of the film paint a good picture of what peaceful life is like in a small African village. A boy named Abu receives a gift of Soccer cleats from his best friend who’s European father owns a restaurant in the city. He plays soccer against make believe opponents while his mother and father watch when all of a sudden this once peaceful village becomes the site of a blood bath. Men women and children are slaughtered with children being forced to kill their own family members or face an execution at the hands of children not much older than themselves.

This film follows the journey of a boy named Abu who, during the raid, is forced by other child soldiers to kill his own father. The leader of this raiding party takes one of Abus cleats as a trophy and wears it during there journey. The surviving children are then lead to a grown man who acts as the armies leader. This leader commands unconditional obedience from the children or they will be executed. Abu who is around 10 years old at the time has a best friend who is compelled to find him. He originally goes off on his own in order to find him but is soon tracked down by his father. The child convinces his father to find Abu and bring him back safely.

The story has some symbolic scenes such as when the boy that forced Abu to shoot his father steps on a land mine and blows his leg off. Abu calmly walks over to the boy and picks up his severed leg, removes the cleat that was stolen from him, wipes it off, and puts it on. When Abu does this he becomes the new leader of the young group.

Part of the reason that this film is so hard to watch is that these atrocities are real. This is also the reason that it is so compelling. These African people have to endure severe hardships and during one scene of the movie, it is said that the average life span in that area is around 40 years old. This shortened life span results in an accelerated child hood whe\re children are exposed to many horrible and unspeakable acts.

During the Q&A of the film the director admitted to having talks with some children who were forced to kill members of their own family in real life and in many cases, the stories were much worse than what was actually portrayed in the film. One of the directors goals was to get the word out and get people educated on this subject and I think he did a decent job in doing so. This movie could have been nominated for an academy award for best foreign film but it was disqualified when it was edited before being submitted. This really does the film a great injustice and no doubt hurts its chances of being seen by a wide audience which was one of the directors main goals when this film was originally made.