Invisible Children

Last night I went to see a screening of the documentary Invisible Children, which was filmed by three recent USC grads. These guys traveled to northern Uganda to document a civil war that’s been raging there for over 20 years. A band of religious zealots called the Lord’s Resistance Army is fighting to overthrow the government. These rebels replenish their ranks by kidnapping children mostly ages 6-12 from the surrounding villages. The children are then armed and assigned quotas of people they’re supposed to kill, and are executed if they fail. Children who demonstrate their disloyalty to the rebels by crying are also summarily executed. The rebels teach the children that smearing their bodies with oil will make them impervious to bullets. (If this fails to work, it means that the victim had somehow displeased God.) The situation has gotten so bad that thousands of children now leave their villages every night and commute miles into the cities to hide from the rebels. The children sleep in basements, piled atop one another. It’s one of those situations that feels to me like science fiction, but is unfortunately very real. The film is not for the faint of heart, but it’s definitely worth checking out, and is even quite funny in places, as people’s basic humanity shines through under even the most trying circumstances.