I’ve wanted to watch this since it came out. I’m kind of sad it took me so long. It’s certainly not a pick-me-up film, but after a crummy day, it is what I needed. Not because it was tragic and someones life is worse than mine. But because this was an absolutely beautifully done film.
In a setting we cant even imagine growing up in, a young boy innocently tries to sell a tv set with no screen, for food rations. He is then thrown head long into the bowels of war. A grittier war than we typically imagine. We see his very childhood stripped away from him. He is handed a machete and a gun and told to kill.
It sounds like a simplistic story, and maybe it is. But this story was about the journey this boy takes. And the fear and the loss and the breaking of his spirit, that you feel with him. The moment he finds his mother, and she doesn’t even recognize him. And in that moment, the final loss of purpose within him. Where does one go from there, when civil war has ravaged your country? Where is home then?