Wednesday, August 30, 2006


Films can often move me deeply. This one did: "Innocent Voices".
In the civil war-torn El Salvador of the 1980s, the government's armed forces are already recruiting twelve year olds, herding them out of their school classes to train them (with US money and personnel) to kill their own people. Chava, aged 11, has just one year of innocence left before he too will be conscripted to fight the government's battle against the rebel guerilla forces or will he join them?

I sobbed. Judith sobbed. It was a convincing and heartrending piece of cinema that made you ache (literally) for the 300,000 child soldiers estimated to be fighting around the world at present. The kind of movie I will be recommending, not for entertainment, but as a sort of duty for those of us who lives of peace and safety, pretty much oblivious to the horrors of man's extreme expressions of his inhumanity to man.
Lord, bring on the new creation.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm with you. This is all wrong.
Came across 'invisiblechildren.com' a while ago, which addresses, in some way, trouble in Uganda. Quite interesting - once you negotiate the menu.

Gordie