I Want to Be a Pilot (2006) *** (out of 4) A young African boy dealing with AIDS tells his hopes for the future in this award-winning short. The very look of the boy is enough to break your heart but his little song on the future is incredibly touching especially for someone his age. On a side point, I'm always curious about these documentaries that look at poor people like the kid here. At one point he says he hasn't eaten in four days and I'm always curious why the director or people behind the short, who obviously have money if they're making a film, don't actually feed him.

Although the film appears to be an autobiographical statement about the boy featured in the movie, it is actually made up of the stories of many dirt poor orphans living in an inhuman slum in Nairobi, Kenya. The film is an unflinching look into the extreme poverty in this town (and much of the rest of the third world) through the eyes of a 12 year-old--and you often see him rooting through the garbage dump looking for scraps of food or things to sell. The boy is the narrator of a long poem you hear as he walks the mud and filth covered walkways of his home. The poem is a metaphor and when he dreams of being a pilot, the child is actually dreaming of transcending his horrible existence to a magical land where his parents are not dead from HIV, he does have an education and he is cared for and he himself does not have HIV. The film is quite heart-breaking and is excellent for teens and children, as it shows them a sight of life that is both painful and real.

Not only a poem, not only a documentary, not only a piece of reality."My last meal was on Sunday, today is Wednesday" says little Omondi.This is touching, true and reminds us that those things we take for granted in our First World are not so usual in Africa.There is another recent documentary in the same key, "Invisibles", produced by Oscar Award-nominated Spanish actor Javier Bardem. Both them invite us to open our eyes to what we, consciously or not, try to ignore. To those invisible people who live beyond our comfortable western countries.Director Diego Quemada-Díaz has worked with Ken Loach, Alejandro González-Iñarritu, Spike Lee and Fernando Mireilles, all them concerned with social affairs.

I saw this short film at Sundance where it was played just before the premier of The Devil Came on Horseback. This was definitely one of my favorite shorts at Sundance, primarily because the message behind the film is poignant and necessary, especially considering the reality for orphans living in the slums of sub-Saharan East Africa. We follow Omondi through the slum that he lives in, Kibera, while voice-over of a child recites the poem that Diego Quemada-Diez wrote after interviewing orphans there. Omondi dreams of becoming a pilot, but also of living in a world where he can walk on clean grass and have access to clean water and an education, things that no child should have to dream about. The footage of Kibera is harrowing, and it's very hard to come away from seeing the film without feeling profoundly motivated to do something about the situation that these children face on a day to day basis. Juxtaposed with The Devil Came on Horseback, that evening turned out to be an emotional one for many audience members, a huge portion of whom cried during both films (myself included) in lieu of the horrors we were paying privy to. Overall, I recommend this film to everyone, but in particular, those of us with true concern for global issues and the affect that poverty has on communities in third world countries. If you care, most likely, you'll come away determined to make a difference.