ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how War Witch (Nguyen 2012) uses cited and uncited images to represent an African girl soldier. The film, funded by Canadian institutions and directed by a Canadian filmmaker, employs oral testimony as a narrative strategy. It builds on already-known narratives of former girl and women soldiers typically found in humanitarian literature. The film’s main character, Komona, is kidnapped by a rebel group, suffers sexual and other abuses and eventually escapes. But the film also goes beyond the cited to emphasise Komona’s tactical agency in ways that challenge the stereotypical representations of the girl soldier as a helpless and silent victim. However, this chapter argues that despite the use of uncited images in War Witch, the film presents a stereotypical Afro-pessimistic view of Africa often associated with the Global North perspective. The war does not end, and Komona’s position remains precarious because she lives in a war-riddled failed state incapable of protecting her from the cycle of violence.
