After donning that infamous yellow sweat suit, blunt-cut bangs and a sleek set of Samurai swords to kick some serious ass as the coma-recovered Bride in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films, Uma Thurman has understandably spent the past few years taking it easy, acting in less physically rigorous films. (See Be Cool, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and The Accidental Husband.)
Seems romantic comedies aren’t cutting it for the leggy blond. “This is a film that had to get made,” said Thurman in the July 20 issue of Variety, explaining her decision to play Sister Caroline in Girl Soldier, produced and directed by Will Raee. “It’s beyond me that in this day and age the exploitation of child soldiers goes virtually unnoticed and unchecked by Western media.”
Loosely based on Kathy Cook’s book, Stolen Angels, Raee’s film is a fictionalized account of the atrocities committed against the Aboke girls, 139 devout Roman Catholic boarding school students from St. Mary’s College in Northern Uganda. Rebel soldiers from Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) abducted the girls at 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 10, 1996.
Officially branded a terrorist by the United States following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Kony has a sordid reputation and history of violence against his own people. In January 1987 he began mobilizing troops for his guerrilla movement, which cited the Christian Bible and the Ten Commandments as its primary inspiration. Despite his religious proclamations, Kony missed the memo condemning stealing and murder: Over the past two decades, the LRA has abducted an estimated 20,000 children and has the blood of a half a million people on its hands.
Stranger than fiction
The night the Aboke girls were kidnapped, the dorms were full of candy stockpiled for an imminent National Independence Day celebration. And because many of the rebel soldiers were also teenagers and children — an estimated 80 percent of the LRA’s army consists of abducted children under the age of 8 — they snatched the sweet treats along with their terrified captives.
In an eerie echo of the Reese’s Pieces scene in E.T., Sister Rachele Fassera and two male teachers followed the candy wrappers to the rebel camp where they begged the LRA leader, Mariano Ocaya, to release the girls. Ocaya initially conceded but changed his mind when a government helicopter circulated in the night sky. He eventually permitted 109 girls to return to the school with their Headmistress, but decided to keep thirty girls who were dragged off into the bush.
Thurman’s Sister Caroline is modeled after Sister Rachele Fassera, who remained a tireless advocate for her kidnapped students, lobbying parents, the government, the United Nations and the pope to rescue them as well as thousands of other children who were forced to trade their A’s for AK-47s.
When screenwriter Stephanie Pinola brought Will Raee her script, his reaction was comparable to Thurman’s. “It blew me away,” said the co-founder of Caspian Pictures, a new independent film company dedicated to creating socially conscious silver screen hits. “I had heard about Darfur, but I knew nothing about the issue of child soldiers.”
Getting the facts
An Africa neophyte who had never set foot on the continent, Raee did his homework, devouring dense books like Richard Dowden’s Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles. He learned some startling statistics: For example, today there are over 300,000 child soldiers engaged in conflict worldwide. The situation is particularly bad for girls, who endure a different set of issues than their male peers.
“Girl soldiers experience a double trauma,” said Sarita Hartz, Director of Zion Project, a grassroots NGO working closely with Raee on a complimentary advocacy campaign. “First, they are kidnapped, then many of them are forced to kill parents, family members, or other children as part of the indoctrination process.”
It doesn’t stop with this harsh hazing, either.
“Girls are often forced to carry heavy loads across long miles. If they become ill or hurt their leg, they are killed or other children are made to machete them to death in front of their peers. If girls make it long enough or are old enough or are pretty enough, they are chosen to become the wives of men twice or three times their age. These men often have AIDS and then pass it on to their younger wives. The girls’ lives are dominated by rape and survival,” explained Sarita, who has been working in Uganda since 2006. “Some girls also go into battle, often strapping their babies onto their backs. Many return from fighting only to find that a bullet has gone through their child, sometimes the only person in the world she had to love.”
When conflicts end or girl soldiers are rescued from their servitude, their struggles are far from over. Some are sent to camps for Internally Displaced People (IDPs); these are notoriously plagued by public health crises, sexual violence, and food shortages.
“Many girls struggle to support their children, says Nivi Narang, Campaigns Director at War Child, an international charity that works to protect children in conflict-affected Iraq, Afghanistan, Uganda and D.R. Congo. “Having missed out on an education, they have very limited access to opportunities and find themselves trapped in poverty. Many end up turning to sex work.”
Zion Project’s Hartz paints an even more vivid picture: “Many girls return to communities that were not like the ones they left. They receive little counseling or aid in establishing some semblance of a life. People stare at them like killers and mutter insults under their breath. These girls are persecuted because society feels they carry the ‘sons of Kony.’”
Telling a story from the heart
For Raee, who cut his teeth directing and producing reality television shows that paid the bills but weren’t exactly dream jobs, this was an ideal first feature film project. “The more I explored the issue, the more convinced I became that this was something we had to do,” said the filmmaker, who’s also developing a project about the 1993 coup in Iran.
In addition to Zion Project, Raee is also working with Grace Akallo, one of the thirty Aboke girls forced to endure seven months of torture, starvation, and rape at the hands of her kidnappers.
“This war took the best and the brightest of society and subjected them to slavery,” said Zion Project’s Hartz. “It has sucked the life out of them and spit them back out as though they were traitors to their own country. It has divided tribe against tribe, North against South, mother against child. The long-term implications are severe.”
Unlike other girl soldiers — many experience inordinate post-traumatic stress and deep fears that they will never marry — Akallo is thriving and, well, kicking ass. In addition to making sure Raee gets his facts right and receiving a full scholarship to Massachusetts’ Gordon College, she is also the co-author of Girl Soldier, another book about the conflict.
The Akallo, Raee and Hartz triumvirate have the potential to produce a powerful film that can trigger crucial advocacy around this humanitarian crisis. Hollywood changing the world? It wouldn’t be the first time. Case in point: 2006′s Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The film raised awareness about conflicts and human rights abuses in diamond mining, even persuading big bling businesses to sign on to the United Nations’ Kimberley Process Certification System. Let’s hope for a repeat performance.
Uma Thurman photo courtesy of Rita Molnar, via Wikimedia Commons. Other photos courtesy of hdptcar via Flickr.
