Movie Review: War Dance

The documentary, War Dance, was filmed in 2005 and tells the story of three children who are members of the Acholi ethnic group. These children along with 60,000 other people live in a Patongo refugee camp, a remote northern Ugandan village. Once each month the United Nations trucks in food – usually rice and beans. The children take off school to wait in day-long lines to collect their family’s share.

The camp is under military protection from the Lord’s Resistance Army, a terrorist group that has been rebelling against the government for several decades. Some of the things these children tell about experiencing at the hands of this Army are devastating. Some parents sent their children into the bush knowing that the LRA was coming and would kill the parents. These same children believe that if they had not been sent into the bush their parents would still be alive.

In 2005, the camp’s primary school participated in the National Music Competition in Kampala. The film focuses on the three children as they prepare for the event, build confidence, discuss their lives in the camp and the horrors they’ve experienced, and their individual hopes and dreams.

I will be ministering in a part of Uganda near the Patongo area called Karamoja. Watch the movie to get a feel for the children and their lives there. It's a very inspirational film.