French Director Shocks UN With Disturbing Film on Child soldiers

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — French film-maker Jean-Stephane Sauvaire brought the horror of Liberia's civil war to UN headquarters this week with the screening of "Johnny Mad Dog", his brutal portrayal of child soldiering.

Sauvaire's film, which won the Prize of Hope at this year's Cannes film festival, is based on a novel by Congolese writer Emmanuel Dongala about two teens trying to survive civil war in an unnamed African country.

In an interview with AFP, Sauvaire conceded that his film was violent, but said that the gun-toting youngsters in the film, all war veterans, were not traumatized by the experience and rather found acting therapeutic.

He said he wanted audiences to understand what it was like to be a child soldier and to be shocked and moved by the stories in the film.

"How can you do a movie about the war if it's not violent?," he asked.

Tuesday night's screening was sponsored by the office of Radhika Coomaraswamy, the special representative of the UN Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, Special Court for Sierra Leone prosecutor Steven Rapp and France's UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert.