Admission is free to all ETFO (Waterloo Region) members. EVERYONE WELCOME.
EFTO (Waterloo Region) members must show membership cards. Cash collected at door will be donated by the EFTO to a charity.
“Montreal director Kim Nguyen’s Rebelle begins inside an impoverished African compound. The poorest of the poor while away the hours around their clapboard huts by a lake. It’s beautifully rendered, a Western vision of Africa in all its humanity, poetry and need for help.
“Rebel fighters run ashore in makeshift boats, storm through the camp with assault rifles and massacre families and abduct children to become soldiers. One teenage, Komona, girl becomes the story’s focus. Before she is carried away, Komona is forced to kill her parents.
“With a less-talented director, that would summarize the film. Nguyen, however, turns it into a far richer film. Suffering beatings, exhaustion and hallucinations, Komona begins to see visions of the dead. Her visions help her outrun an ambush and survive a barrage of bullets. They give the jungle a human essence and guide her. They change her position among the children. She’s deemed a witch.
“When the children are taken to the rebel stronghold, the film shifts into the schoolyard violence of the rebel organization, children leading children. Then we shift to Congolese daily life after Komono and her young love desert the rebels and try to return to an ordinary town.
“Each shift acts as a chapter, flowing together under Nguyen’s direction. Nguyen twists reality at each turn. Komona’s journey is a series of surprises, giving her character depth and turning her into much more than a victim. It also makes Rebelle far more than a war film.” - Guy Dixon, Globe & Mail