Written by Pollo Misterioso
After making its run in the festival market, including Sundance Film festival, and a limited release in theaters in November 2007, the Academy Award nominated documentary War/Dance has been spreading a powerful message on the simple ways that music can uplift the wariest of souls, in the most bleak situations.
Northern Uganda has been in a state of war for the past twenty years. The rebels are attacking the local villages, killing innocent people, and abducting children to become part of their army. Families are forced into refugee camps; unable to return to their homes they are forced to start a new life. In War/Dance there is hope amongst the turmoil and that lies with the children and the music they create.
The children’s school, Patongo, is able to compete for the first time in the National Music Competition in Kampala. Here the students participate in eight different categories of song and dance, including a traditional dance that is native to their tribe and an original composition. War/Dance beautifully intertwines three children’s stories and their relationship to the war and the music that inspires them during this turmoil.
Nancy is a fourteen-year-old dancer who has had to take care of her siblings since the death of her father and abduction of her mother. Crying to the camera, she recounts how scared she was the night that the rebels came for her mother. Resilient, she understands what she must do for her family and she turns to music and dance saying that when she dances “it feels like home.”
Dominic plays the xylophone with a passion that is tangible from the screen. He had been a child soldier for the rebels and has escaped to the camp where he lives with his mother and plays xylophone with the school. The stories he tells are the horrifying tales that cannot be avoided and should not go unnoticed, haunting after the film has finished.
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