This movie was very extraordinary and it is one of the first movies I've ever seen with a female child soldier. The way this movie begins is quite gory, where the girl is captured but she is forced to shoot her parents, something I could never imagine having to do. Then having to live with the people who just killed your entire village, very unimaginable. The idea of Witchcraft in this movie seems a little far fetched to me, I don't believe in magic so I'm not sure why the rebels think that they can win the war if they have to Witch. I really liked how the movie showed the progression of the main character by showing us two years of her life. She faced great amounts of adversity, the main thing that showed this was when she killed the rebel general by doing a not so okay thing to him. The way this movie ends is not the most awful or best ways I've ever seen, she ends up having a baby that does not belong to her Albino husband. She also gets on a bus headed to the butcher's house, so it seems as if things may start working out for her.

When we think of African countries, many Westerners think of countries in the midst of bloody civil wars involving child soldiers, senseless violence, AIDs, etc. Our impression of African countries is one that we've learned from movies like Blood Diamond and from images presented by charities and documentaries with major press coverage like Invisible Children and the Kony 2012 campaign. The unintended consequence of these shocking images, presented for the heartfelt purpose of raising awareness, is this: the single story. We have a few images serving as one generic story representing an entire continent of countries and cultures.The complexities, variations, and even just the common middle-class, everyday lives that exist in African countries are reduced to this single story: of starving, war-torn people waiting for the rest of the world to save them by donating a few dollars, or by buying a "buy one give one" pair of Toms shoes.War Witch embodies the single story that many Westerners think of the "country of Africa" because we simply meld all African countries together into one homogeneous war-torn state. In fact, War Witch doesn't even differentiate which country or war the story represents. The setting is simply "Africa." The Beauty of War Witch As I watched the first few scenes of the film, the tragedy of the child soldier story quickly become apparent as the movie's story. I was initially disappointed as it is a story with which I'm already familiar. Luckily, the beauty of this film's simplicity also became apparent. Without much dialogue, we as an audience were able to suspend our disbelief and appreciate the supernatural aspects of the story as a child's attempt to cope with the tragedies she faces. We watch as she deals with death, separation, and heartbreak while she is haunted by ghosts of her parents. The ghosts aren't cheesy nor are they scary, they are simply haunting reminders that the soul of the main character is not at rest.While the child conveys strength through each atrocity she faces, we as an audience are reminded by the white ghosts that she is not at ease. Title slides appear at different moments throughout the film and denote our young protagonist's ages throughout the film: 12, 13 and 14 years old. Displaying her age, rather than a date and time, reminds us of the innocence robbed as we travel with the main character through her struggles as she "forces tears back into her eyes." Were it not for these displays of her age, we would forget that the strength shown by the young woman is actually shown by a child. Nguyen excels at reminding the audience of this, in portraying the child's coping mechanisms through supernatural visions, and at having us witness tragedy without astoundingly gory scenes that, while they may be more accurate, would distract from our journey with the child.Visit aMovieaCountryaJourney.com for more.

I watched it last night, I couldn't stop crying, it was heart breaking, to see people, being treated, like no one should ever be treated. I don't understand why people do the things they do, It's just wrong that we live in a world where this goes on, Africa must be the hardest country to live in, my heart goes out to everyone there, cause it just isn't fair that anyone has to go through this one life we have like this! There aren't any words what can express what those people go through , Not that I would understand anyway, it's far from from my little world. It was enlightening for me though, I don't know much about Africa, but It is clear as day, that this violent reality of life they live, has to end! we need to put an end to this senseless brutality, it just shouldn't exist anywhere!

'War Witch' is set somewhere in central Africa, but no particular country is identified. It's by a Canadian-based writer, Kim Nguyen, who has a proffered up a most harrowing and disturbing tale of the abduction of a 12 year old girl by a band of criminals who call themselves 'rebels' and how they transform this girl and other children into armed and vicious soldiers.The film begins with an unbearably difficult scene to watch. Komona (the protagonist played by the very talented newcomer, Rachel Mwanza) is forced to kill her own parents and later, she and other abducted children are issued AK-47s, where they're forced to fight government soldiers who are pursuing them.An albino child-soldier, Magician, gives Komona a tree sap that induces hallucinatory visions. Throughout the film, Komona has visions of her murdered parents, painted all in white. Early on, she escapes from the government soldiers after she's warned by these visions of her parents. Due to this escape, the leader of the so-called 'rebels', Great Tiger, declares her a 'war witch' and none of Great Tiger's soldiers are allowed to whip Komona. Nonetheless, she still is forced to dig for coltan, a metallic ore which is considered one of the "blood minerals", which these roving gangs of criminals are fighting over.At a certain point, Komona runs off with Magician, who is determined to marry her. At the midpoint, there's some comic relief, where Magician must find a 'white rooster', to consummate the marriage ritual. Before the young couple attains marital bliss, Great Tiger's men track down Magician and kill him with a machete for running off with Komona. She's returned to Great Tiger and she kills him inside a tent by castrating him as he attempts to rape her.The final third of the film has Komona escaping from Great Tiger's men and giving birth to Magician's baby. I suppose the ending is meant to be sort of a hopeful release from all the horrible things we see earlier in the film. But is it realistic? Wouldn't Great Tiger's men come after Komona as they came after her lover before? Despite the shortcomings of the film's climax, it's still a powerful chronicle of what's going on in some parts of the world today. While you may expect some entity to come in and save these forsaken children in the near future, you probably should hope again. Outsiders don't want to get involved since they'd be putting their own lives on the line for people they're not connected to. The local government forces are so ineffectual or overwhelmed, that they're impotent in the face of these dangerous hoodlums. In this case, offering up some prayers might be the only logical course of action when dealing with this overwhelmingly tragic situation.