War Dance (2007)
Fine Films

Description

Set in war-raved Northern Uganda, the award-winning War Dance will touch your heart with a real-life story about a group of children whose love of music brings joy, excitement and hope back into their poverty-stricken lives. Three children who have suffered horrific brutalities momentarily forget their struggles as they participate in music, song and dance at their school. Invited to compete in a prestigious music festival in their nation’s capitol, their historic journey is a stirring tale about the power of the human spirit to triumph against tremendous odds.

Tags

Oscar nomination, Children, Refugee, Uganda

Collected reviews and ratings

10 TV Guide | Ken Fox

Far from a grueling expose in Third World misery, the Fines' excellent, even suspenseful, film manages to relate the terrible details of the war in northern Uganda within the context of a hugely entertaining talent show without once trivializing the refugees' experience.
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10 Amazon user reviews

I will never forget one of the lines in the film when a child from the war zone of northern Uganda gets the opportunity to go to the capitol Kampala with their school music group and says "I can't wait to see what peace is like".
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10 Amazon user reviews

I will never forget one of the lines in the film when a child from the war zone of northern Uganda gets the opportunity to go to the capitol Kampala with their school music group and says "I can't wait to see what peace is like".
Read full review (DVD)

9.0 DVD Talk | Brian Orndorf

"War Dance" follows a long line of documentaries eager to expose the joy of life trapped deep within the world's most dangerous locations. Personally, I don't think I'll ever fatigue of such tales and "War Dance" is a worthy addition to the genre.
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9.0 PopMatters.com | Cynthia Fuchs

War/Dance doesn’t show maps or revisit all the sites of devastation, it doesn’t chart trajectories or detail dates and numbers. Instead, it poses a fundamental question: how to represent such horrors, so they are not only “true” to specific experiences, but also comprehensible to viewers without personal touchstones for understanding.
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8.8 DVD Verdict | Jennifer Malkowski

Though they sacrifice a certain amount of complexity in favor of emotion, Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine have made an extremely affecting film that humanizes the survivors of some truly inhuman deeds and brings positive attention to a part of the world that too rarely receives it.
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7.0 New York Times | Stephen Holden

“War/Dance,” in spite of its slickness, is an honorable, sometimes inspiring exploration of the primal healing power of music and dance in an African tribal culture.
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5.0 Salon.com | Andrew O'Hehir

It's the film's reassuring, almost hypnotic visual rhythms, along with its Hollywood-like narrative structure that make it bearable. At least two of the abandoned children the Fines profile in the Patongo refugee camp, members of a rural tribe victimized by rebel militiamen, have personal histories so hideous you couldn't stand to hear them without some sugarcoating.
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4.0 Variety | John Anderson

The young black faces are too beautiful, the landscapes too pretty, and the personal stories of slaughter too scripted. While the pic may be targeting Westerners who want to feel less awful about genocide and global negligence, it's hard to imagine "War Dance" appealing to that crowd - or any other.
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