Film review: War Witch - love in Kinshasa

War Witch is an unsettling drama about a child soldier who is forced to kill her parents by the rebel forces.

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, War Witch is an unsettling French language drama about a 12-year-old girl named Komona (Rachel Mwanza), a child soldier who is forced to kill her parents by the rebel forces.

The film is skillfully directed and scripted by Kim Nguyen, a film-maker who discovered Rachel Mwanza after watching her in a documentary about street children in Kinshasa, the capital of DRC Congo.

Mwanza’s performance in the film is quite amazing, displaying a restrained sense of misery and pain accompanied with a quiet strength to survive unbearable circumstances. Her performance is all the more commendable considering that the uneducated actress was unable to read or write at the time of her casting. Perhaps in War Witch, she draws from her own experiences of a difficult childhood, creating a performance that has all the right nuances into making her character believable.

Komona’s life is documented year by year, when her rebel superiors are convinced that she has magical powers, a superstition in African culture that is prevalent in the film. Somehow, Komona escapes with a fellow child soldier, an albino named Magicien, played in a fine performance by Serge Kanyinda.

At this point War Witch reminds us that Komona is just an innocent young girl, and the film takes a sweet and humorous turn as she and Magicien fall in love, and look to get married. Here, local culture dictates that in order to get married, Magicien must present Komona with a rare white rooster, a quest that earns the boy uncontrolled laughter from the locals. But Komona’s happiness doesn’t last. Tragedy befalls once again, as she struggles to break free from the rebels, and to put the haunting spirits of her loved ones to rest.

In order to focus on characterization, War Witch deftly avoids displaying the visuals of bloody massacres. But War Witch is still quite a powerful piece of work, and an important film about a real world tragedy that could use a little more attention.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, March 17^th, 2013.

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