![]() Perhaps she does have mystic powers, but Komona wants none of them. It gives her temporary protection but no peace, and escape is the only plan for survival. Surviving a gun battle convinces the rebel leader (Alain Bastien) Komona has magical properties and she becomes le Grand Tigre’s War Witch. “This is your mother and your father,” they are told over and over about the automatic weapons finally pressed into small hands.Īlone and despairing, Komona finds a protector in Magicien (Serge Kanyinda), a 15-year-old albino soldier who makes protective talismans from castoffs and chicken bones. Eyes dull, they train with sticks mimicking rifles, like kids do the world over in carefree play. She joins other children in the forest who march on without food, their senses dulled by the effects of a druglike tree sap, their route determined by a sorcerer who divines the future. Komona is forced to shoot and kill her parents. ![]() Rebel soldiers trying to defeat the government in service of le Grand Tigre (Mizinga Mwinga) attack the village, forcing the first of many cruelties on her. We first see Komona with her family, in a gentle scene of tenderness as her mother braids the dozing child’s hair. Komona acts as narrator for the film, speaking quietly to the baby that is growing inside her as she recalls the past two years of her life, an existence bracketed in violence, torment, magic, fleeting power and even rare moments of happiness. It is difficult to watch and impossible to forget. Now a new accolade on the heels of its Canadian premiere at TIFF: as predicted by many, Montreal director Kim Nguyen’s Rebelle (War Witch) will be Canada’s entry in the Best Foreign Film Oscar race and deservedly so. She earned best actress prizes at Tribeca (along with winning best narrative film) and Berlin film festivals. ![]() Her natural and deeply moving performance as Komona, made to join a ragtag rebel force in an unnamed African country at age 12 amid unspeakable cruelty, is riveting. Much of it is down to 14-year-old Congolese native and screen newcomer Rachel Mwanza, a one-time street kid found living in Kinshasa. The ghosts of murdered villagers that haunt a young girl brutally forced into slavery as a child soldier in Rebelle mirror the film’s dramatic effect on an audience. Starring Rachel Mwanza, Serge Kanyinda and Mizinga Mwinga.
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