REBELLE / WAR WITCH

France/ Canada, 2012, 90 minutes, Colour.
Rachel Mwanza.
Directed by Kim Nguyen.

We have seen stories of children in African countries abducted from their villages and forced to go to war with rebel armies. This is another of those although Komono, the child at the centre of the film, is a girl, taken at 12. In a scene of horror, she is forced to shoot her parents to save them from a death by machete. She is trained in fighting, taken in by the chief and proclaimed his war witch.

The film was made in Congo, Kinshasa, but no country is named in the film. Which means that there is no real political context for the story, simply violent rebels fighting the powers that be. While this means we concentrate on Komono’s story, we miss the political edge.

The story becomes more complicated when Komono escapes with Magician one of the main young soldiers. They want to marry and are determined to find a rare white rooster necessary for the ritual. When all seems to be right, soldiers attack again, leaving a pregnant Komono wandering the countryside, wanting to bury her parents before she gives birth. This emphasis on the dead, many here visualised as ghosts, is a feature of the film.

The film aims at an emotional impact and succeeds with the character of Komono. The picture of Congo is of unrest in the poor countryside, but that is context rather than a theme.

1. A film about Africa? Civil war? Child soldiers?

2. The Congo settings, the villages, the countryside, the cities? The musical score?

3. The title, the rebels, Komono and her being named as the rebel leader witch?

4. The opening, the village, the rebels coming? Komono and her parents? The rebels taking Komono, ordering her to kill her parents, shoot them instead of their suffering by machete? Her doing so? Her grief? Her quest to bury them so that their ghosts would not be wandering the earth?

5. Komono, her age, working with the rebels, the leader, training in warfare, sleeping partner? Her trying to cope?

6. The role of Magician? With the other troops? In war? In training? In recreation – and the scene with the group of young people watching the video of Jean-Claude? Van Damme in the bus? Children being forced to be adults?

7. Komono, her attachment to Magician, their escape, their wanderings? The decision to marry? The story of the white rooster? Their search, people laughing? Final help? Getting the rooster, chasing it?

8. Komono and Magician? A future? Magician’s death? The coming of the rebel troops?

9. The fights, the government, the army?

10. Komono being pregnant? The rebel leader being the father? Her decision to go back home? The appearance of the ghosts of the dead children? The long quest? The help from her uncle, the butcher? He and his wife, the help with the white rooster?

11. Komono’s collapse, her struggle to survive, in the boat, rowing to the village, seeing her parents, the bones, the emblems, burying them?

12. Her giving birth, the child? Going to her uncle? A future?

13. Komono as symbol of young Africa, in servitude, in war, in freedom, in hope?