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LITTLE VOICES: AN ANIMATED JOURNEY INTO THE VIOLENT WORLD OF COLUMBIA’S CHILDREN
07/09/2010
"If we listed to children, we would silence the sounds of bullets." It was with the spirit of this declaration from the Columbian Commission for Human Rights that Jairo Eduardo Carrillo and Oscar Andrade made Little Voices, an animated docu-fiction that arose from the drawings and voices of a few of the numerous Columbian children raised in violence. The film mixes animation techniques – not unlike Waltz with Bashir – to reveal to the world the reality of a country that has nearly five million refugees, and bear witness to the experiences of children who have survived atrocity to become tiny soldiers, forced to see other children killed or tortured.
"Unfortunately, in Colombia it’s very easy to find child refugees or orphans who have gone through terrible violence,” say the directors. “Asking one of them to speak about these experiences is like asking an Italian child to speak about his or her parents’ divorce. They’ve gone through a traumatic event but to them it’s normal because it happens all the time. This is precisely what is most terrible: these children tell atrocious stories as if they were normal.”
Carrillo and Andrade first made a short film and then put together the tales of five Columbian children (chosen from over 100) and their drawings (the film’s visual soul) to create a narrative that contains elements of fiction. One boy decided to become a guerilla fighter because he had no other choice; another lost an arm and a leg in a bombing.
"The accounts in the film are shocking, but we decided to leave out some things that were much worse. We interviewed a girl whose voice broke continuously as she cried, whose voice sounded like that of an old woman’s, and we didn’t have it in us to include her in the film. We wanted the film to make an impact in sensitizing audiences, but without exaggerating. Because Little Voices also has an educational goal and is meant for children aged seven and up.”
Said the directors of the film presented at Venice Days: "Besides being greatly honored to show the film here, this is an important opportunity to let the widest possible audiences know about a very grave situation, which is often neglected by the foreign media."
Michela Greco – Cinecittà News
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