The girl soldier and [his]story in Heart of Fire/Feuerherz (Falorni 2008)

This chapter explores how differences between Heart of Fire/Feuerherz (Falorni 2008) and Mehari’s memoir, Heart of Fire: From Child Soldier to Soul Singer (2006), which inspires the film, reflect the differences between Mehari and the filmmakers’ sensibilities and differences in production contexts. Set in the 1980s Eritrea, Heart of Fire/Feuerherz offers a humanitarian narrative often associated with contemporary representations of child soldiers in films about African postcolonial wars. The film, a Germany/Austria/France co-production, is directed by an Italian man. It focuses on the turbulent childhood of a young girl, Awet, who is handed over to one of Eritrea’s liberation armies, the Jebha, by her father. Mehari’s memoir emphasises gendered experiences and how Eritrea’s complex colonial history, which involved Italians, the British and Ethiopia, created economic and sociopolitical conditions that shaped the war and war experiences. However, in many ways, the film overlooks these complexities in favour of a humanitarian narrative that constructs an ideal victim caught up in a conflict devoid of clear or meaningful political motives. This chapter demonstrates how the differences between Mehari’s story and the film’s story reflect the persistence of neocolonial imaginations in shaping Global North representations of postcolonial African wars.