It has a very moving story, even if the acting is only okay and the main character is rather dull and not the most likable of protagonists. I like the writing and the character development, but while the actress who plays Komona has been praised, I found her performance lacking. It's good, but not great, and I'll be really surprised if this one takes the Oscar for best foreign language film (which interestingly is based on a real story from Burma, but set in Africa, and is actually a Canadian film).

The original title of the film is Rebelle.

Really good film from Canadian filmmaker Kim Ngyuen. A young girl narrates the story of her life as a child soldier in Sub Saharan Africa to the unborn child in her belly.

This has the brutality of 'City of God' and the foundations for 'Beasts of No Nation', which must have taken large inspiration from this film. An Oscar nomination is zero bearing of quality for a film, but normally it means the movie has a blu-ray release at the very least. Not so with 'War Witch' which is quite difficult to track down.

There are moments of real beauty mixed in with the bloodshed of civil war in the un-named African country, and while there is plenty of magical realism and 'did that really happen' elements, it doesn't stray too far from the central message of the tragedy of children at war.

7.8/10