Innocent Voices

It starts lyrically with a view of the clear running water.

A large soldier’s boot stamps down on sodden ground. We see children’s feet attempting to match the adult’s strides.

Next, a long shot down reveals a group of four young boys under heavily armed guard. A voice-over spoken by Chava one of the prisoner-children asks: ‘Why do they want to kill us when we have done nothing?’ Why indeed?

Mexican director Luis Mandoki’s Innocent Voices (12A) deals with the contingent nature of childhood in developing countries blighted by conflict and poverty. The fighting associated with the civil war in El Salvador (1980-1992) that overtakes Chava’s life may have ended over fifteen years ago, but the plight of the 300,000* child soldiers recruited to fight across the world is very much a live one today. Innocent Voices is an ideal means of exploring this phenomenon with students. It is also a filmed story that should provide media and film studies students with much to discuss.

(*Source: Save the Children)