When we think of child soldiers, the image of a young boy with a gun is often what comes into our head. One of the HotDocs screening next week at the Canadian Documentary Film Festival reminds us that girls also make up ranks in child armies, and not just as commanders wives or cooks, but as trained fighters.

Grace, Milly, Lucy…Child Soldiers tells the stories of three Ugandan women who were abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (a rebel group fighting in Northern Uganda), and their experiences both during and after their time as child soldiers.  Click here to check out the trailer.

One was living in a dormitory when she was abducted, along with almost 140 other girls. They were divided into two groups: 30 were told to come with the rebels, and the rest were set free. She was not one of the ones to be let go, and the rebels told her “If one girl tries to escape, the rest of the 29 will be killed.”

It was very interesting to hear the stories of the girls’ experiences after returning to their villages. Many of them had children that were born in the bush, and both them and their children faced stigma in the community they returned to: “They say we have evil spirits in us that dictate our actions.”

Their biggest fear is that because their children are stigmatized and have so little opportunity for success, if the current generation of children decides to go back to war to deal with their difficulties, the cycle will continue. Those that have returned are referred to as “the lost generation,” but there is fear that one lost generation leads to many lost generations, and progress out of poverty and war will be impossible.

We screened Grace, Milly, Lucy…Child Soldiers with some girls from the Speakers’ Bureau this week…stay tuned for their review coming soon!

Grace, Milly, Lucy…Child Soldiers is playing Wednesday, May 5 at 7:30pm and Saturday, May 8 at 4pm at The Royal Cinema.