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In a Soldiers Footsteps

   5 May 2006, the wee hours

In the Footsteps of a Soldier was crazy. This documentary had so many twists you would think there was no possible way it could be non-fiction. Steven Ndugga is the “star” of the film, a Ugandan who was forced to join a rebel militia at the age of 13. The movie was originally going to be about his story, when he discovers his son, who he believed to be dead, is alive and fighting as a child-soldier in the Congo. The film then shifts focus, and is about his quest to get his son back. You might think that there could be no more twists after one such as that, but the movie’s twists don’t end there. Normally I wouldn’t feel bad about talking about a documentary in some detail, but this is the sort of film its actually worth knowing very little about going in. The way the film ends is really surprising. This film is playing again, and is definitely worth checking out.

Aside: Once Hotdocs is done with, I plan to write a post about the festival as a whole, to link all these “reviews” together, and to add links for more information to the posts themselves.

Movies | Hot Docs 2006