Echoes of War (2004)

Directed by: Joop van Wijk | 70 minutes | documentary | With: children from Afghanistan, Colombia, Sierra Leone and New York

Nancy Barron wrote the children’s book “A little elephant finds his courage” in 1994. Filmmaker Joop van Wijk saw in Uganda how Nancy used the book in her work with groups of children and women. Her booklet inspired children to tell about their memories. He decided to use the story as a source of inspiration for a film. ‘Echoes of War’ targets young adults aged 16 and over and wants to draw attention to the social relevance of the problem.

The book focuses on Baba: a brave little elephant who loses his father in the jungle. By reading to children the story of Baba, who has to overcome all kinds of situations in his struggle to survive, the children can talk about their own experiences. This helps them to give a place to what has happened and also to share experiences with others. This book is now used all over the world as a starting point for conversations with children (and adults, mostly women) about their experiences with loss and how they move forward with their lives. In this way children are stimulated to talk about unpleasant experiences and they look for a solution for the future.

The film ‘Echoes of War’ combines animation of the reading book with reactions from children from Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Colombia and New York. When a girl from Sierra Leone listens to Babas’ story, she whispers softly: That happened to me too. She then tells in a penetrating way what happened to her. She also shows a strength that speaks of hope for the future. The film makes the viewer feel intensely for boys and girls who are unsolicited part of all kinds of horrors. Violence certainly does not occur exclusively in the known war zones. In the film you also see children who lost a father or mother in the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. It also turns out that their experiences essentially have many similarities. Even though their living situations differ greatly, they also have profound traumatic experiences due to violence.

Despite all the bad experiences and stories of the children, it is a film that moves and that, despite all the misery, also makes you hopeful. It is a film that registers and does not judge and a film that you should go to with your children, who are not too young. The power that these children radiate sparkles off the screen, it is beautiful and sad at the same time. It is precisely the alternation of the children’s life stories with the cartoon story that makes the portrait filmed sensitively and with integrity and also shows that these children are the real heroes. From them goes a strong call for peace.