There’s a phrase made famous by Thomas Hobbes, used to great effect in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, and that is: Homo homini lupus. That Latin phrase roughly translates to “Man is a wolf to man,” and strikes the keynote to part of the powerful film War/Dance.

The film, exquisitely shot by Sean Fine and directed by Andrea Nix Fine, tells the story of a group of Ugandan children who live in a government camp that offers 60,000 refugees a semi-safe haven from 20-year war between the Ugandan government and the Christian terrorist group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army.  The leader of the LRA is Joseph Kony, and his overt aims are to build a Christian theocracy in the northern region of Uganda — which is home to the Acholi tribe.  However, what the LRA is really doing is abducting children (who often have to kill their own parents) and forcing them to fill many roles (i.e., soldiers, sex slaves, and torturers) as the LRA attempts to build their utopia.  Kony claims to be creating a society based on the Ten Commandments, but, as it’s been pointed out by many human rights organizations, the LRA routinely violates many of the commandments they claim to uphold (the first, obviously, is not to kill.)

In this war-torn environment, we meet three children (Rose, Dominic and Nancy) who live in the camp and have had to witness horrors no one should.  Nancy’s father and mother were abducted by the LRA one day while working in the fields, and Nancy and her siblings had to hide for three days in the bush before fleeing to the safety of the government camp.  Nancy’s mother eventually escaped from her captors and was able to briefly stay with the kids before moving to another city to find work.  Nancy’s father didn’t survive.  He was killed almost immediately upon capture (hacked into pieces by a group of kids wielding machetes) and his wife was ordered to pick up the pieces of her dead spouse and bury him.

Rose’s parents were also killed by the LRA and their bodies were displayed in a gruesome way.  She recounted a harrowing story of a time when she was brought to the place where rows of pots were boiling with human remains, and shown the head of her mother. Throughout much of the film, there’s an emotionless shield Rose and Nancy use to protect themselves, but it certainly cracks when the girls recount their tragic loss and the alienation they feel. (more…)