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Documentary Film Series Continues with ‘Children of War’

The fourteenth annual Documentary Film Series at OCU University will continue at 2 p.m. April 15 with Bryan Single’s “Children of War.”

All screenings in the series are free to the public and will be held in the Kerr McGee Auditorium in Meinders School of Business at N.W. 27th Street and Blackwelder Avenue. It is sponsored by the Thatcher Hoffman Smith Endowment Fund.

The series title, “Aftermath,” comes from the title of a poem by Pulitzer prize-winner Claudia Emerson, who will give a reading at OKCU April 4.

The documentary “Children of War” was filmed in Uganda over a period of three years. It follows a group of former child soldiers as they undergo a process of trauma therapy and emotional healing while in a rehabilitation center. Having been abducted from their homes and schools and forced to become fighters by the Lord’s Resistance Army—a quasi-religious militia led by self-proclaimed prophet and war criminal Joseph Kony—the children, with the help of a team of trauma counselors, struggle to confront and break through years of captivity, extreme religious indoctrination and participation in war crimes.

“I cannot remember a documentary so wrenching and hopeful, so guileless and authentic,” said Paul Hawken of The New York Times. “Equally rare is a documentary that can be called art. ‘Children of War’ is an aesthetic masterpiece and I do not use that word lightly—if ever. Boys and girls who became the blunt instruments of war return to the remembrance of goodness in an alchemical act of spirituality. ‘Children of War’ should be seen by every young person in the world, and most certainly every trigger happy politician. A radically humanizing narrative done with perfect grace and skillfulness.”

The Ƶ Documentary Film Series will conclude April 22 with Sara Terry’s “Fambul Tok.”

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