Berlinale competition ends with African child soldier film

By Andrew McCathie Feb 17, 2012, 11:21 GMT

Berlin - Canadian director Kim Nguyen's impressive movie about the harrowing life of a 14-year-old girl soldier in Africa and screened Friday in the Berlin Film Festival could emerge as a frontrunner for the Berlinale's top awards.

The film, Rebelle (War Witch), brought to an end the screenings for the festival's main competition.

'I wanted to do it as naively as possible,' Nguyen told a press conference in Berlin marking the movie's world premiere. 'The politics is filtered through the eyes of a child.

'I wanted to do it as a 14-year-old who did not know (about world politics), he said.

A total of 18 films competing for the Berlinale's prestigious Golden Bear for best picture.

The strength of Nguyen's film is likely to have made it a leading candidate for the festival's top awards, which up until now has been dominated by German director Christian Petzold's Barbara.

Petzold's film is set in former communist East Germany and sheds light on the often difficult daily world in the now defunct Stalinist state.

War often mixed with the explosive elements of religion and father-and-son tensions has been a major theme running through this year's festival.

Apart from the brutality of the war, Nguyen explores the spirituality and suspicions of those caught up in the conflict presented in the film, which was shot in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The girl at the centre of the story, Komona is called a witch because she is able see ahead where the government forces are lurking.

The Berlinale's main prizes are to be handed out by the festival's jury - headed by British director Mike Leigh - in a Hollywood-style gala ceremony on Saturday.

A total of 400 movies will have been screened across the main sections of what is the world's biggest film festival in terms of audience when it ends on Sunday.

In Rebelle, Komona is forced into the jungle to become a child soldier after rebels burn her village to the ground and her parents are killed. The movie was shot in Congo.

Her brutal commander, the Great Tiger, orders her to sleep with him before she finally escapes the rebels with the help of an older boy, who she falls in love with.

But despite all the traumas she lives through, Komona represents a beacon of hope and a search for peace in a continent scarred by war and daily horror. 'It is a film about hope and resilence,' said Nguyen.

In the film, Komona's aim is to return to her village so she can bury her parents to prevent them having to eternally wander the country as ghosts.