What makes “Lost Children” so different from other films about child soldiers?

In this documentary the main emphasis is put on the children. We do not politicize the conflict and it’s difficult background. We tell a story about four children, who share the same fate - A film from their perspective and their height. These topics have to be treated very carefully, in order for them not to look plump or too touchy, as that puts you quickly down to the level of charity organisations, aiming to get the waterworks going. Sensational media reports, that represent those children as “little killers” depicting them as freaks, where no option for us either. This is why we did not include children with weapons/guns in their hands. The audience only sees the atrocities of the war, with which the children were confronted with every day, at the beginning and at the end for three minutes. We wanted to observe how the children deal with their problems after their abduction. It was fascinating to see how the children would cling on to the good in the world and their hope for the future, despite their experiences. That made them be little heroes in our eyes, in this futureless world consisting of refugee camps, attacks, starvation and disease.

The stories the children are telling in front of the camera are meant to inspire the audience to create their own images to these stories. Your own imagination can be much crueller and more realistic, than any embedded journalist images. It is the most direct way to participate in the world of these children. This is also a reason why we subtitled the sequences.

The story of the film is about the children’s return home in the middle of the conflict, facing a society which rejects them. We were interested to know if those children could ever become children again. In order to answer this question, we needed to have a long breath and a lot of patience. This is the reason why we accompanied the children for over half a year, as to understand their psychological development.
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