What is it like to film in the middle of a war? What were you scared of most?

The war raging in north Uganda is invisible. Fronts do no exist. Ambushes on the streets or attacks on the villages at night, give this war a face. Obviously you can see soldiers, guns and tanks everwhere, yet it is impossible to understand this conflict. Even when seeing burnt down houses, wrecks of exploded cars on the side of the street, people in distress people crying and injured, only a couple of hours after an attack, it is impossible to understand the brutality of what happened. The invisible suddenly turns into a dangerous dimension.

You only begin to understand when you hear the shots, when it is too late to react properly. Only through this project we began to learn that fear is something totally individual and that everybody has a different threshold. You cannot say to somebody “don’t be afraid!“ or “don’t worry, we’ll be okay.” Everybody who works for such a project needs to find out for themselves how to deal with this fear.

What kind of a future do you see for the people in this region?

The recently signed peace contract between northern and southern Sudan is definitely the right step forward, to smother the trouble spot in East-Africa. After having achieved peace, America and Uganda might stop their military support in southern Sudan and the Sudanese government might stop their support for the LRA as a result. This way, Josef Kony may be forced to participate in the negotiations. However, as far as we know, armistice and peace negotiations are very fragile in this region and are often used by both sides to re-organise their army. We are convinced that negotiations under the supervision of an international organisation would be the right way to end the misery of the north Ugandan people. The International Criminal Court (ICC) could bring charge against Joseph Kony, the leader of the rebels, as a last resort. An international arrest warrant would be the last straw however, as it might endanger any further negotiations. It could still be used more often as a means of threat, in order to force the rebels back to the negotiating table.