Rebelle (aka War Witch) (2012)

In an unnamed African country at war, a 12 year old girl (Rachel Mwanza, who won the best actress award at his year's Berlin film festival) is forced to kill her parents by anti-government rebels and coerced against her will into joining them as a child soldier. Thus the brutality of war robs her of her childhood while her innate goodness attempts to fend off the inevitable dehumanization process. Canada's entry in this year's foreign language film (it's in French) Oscar category is a powerful and unsettling look at a very real situation in many war torn African countries. Children conscripted by rebel forces into killing machines. Filmed in the Congo, the director Kim Nguyen is fairly (and thankfully) restrained in the more graphic atrocities of war and instead concentrates on the effects it places on a child not emotionally or mentally prepared for its horrors. Mwanza, an unprofessional, gives a remarkable performance going from an unaffected child to a survivor of war and rape. With Serge Kanyinda, Mizinga Mwinga and Alain Lino Mic Bastien.