Ballade vom kleinen Soldaten

Moves the viewer's understanding of the situation around in quite an interesting way. Certain questions are left unanswered, so that it is difficult to assess what's going on. Whatever the surrounding context, however, it is hard to conclude anything other than that in terms of their treatment of the Miskito population, the Sandinistas do not come out looking good.

Such smiles as that on the face of the young boy at the start of the film are more common than one may expect of a film on genocide. In many ways, war for these children is play. While one cannot help but agree with Reichle that these children are brainwashed, it is also evident that they are not simple puppets. They have been wronged - parents and siblings brutally murdered - and they seek justice, but are blinded by their innocence to the full horrors of what may come.

What Herzog does is try to talk to people - to truly talk to people - person to person. He speaks Spanish, so little is lost in translation. He's able to insert himself into an incredibly complicated conflict and ask people what they're dreaming about, what drives their behavior, what kind of songs they like, what happened to their family, and so on and so forth. Out of these conversations we realize there are no heroes in war, not even the Sandinistas, and the children are left to die.

They should be tradin' Pokemons not gunfire :(

Herzog once again demonstrates his willingness to put himself in mortal peril, as he interviews and tags along with some Nicarguan Indians who are fighting back against the sandanistas. Most of the recruits are children aged 9-12. Their stories are horrifying and generate sympathy, but there is also an intense unease with the way in which they're being indoctrinated. Their trainers boast of how easy they are to brainwash at that age. Harrowing and thought-provoking.

These kids are tasked to fight some weird geopolitical conflict most adults don't understand, and all the kids understand is that their families have been killed by it. It's a brutal situation.

Often haunting war documentary that starts depicting Miskito people talking about personal and collective tragedies — villages lost, relatives slaughtered — to then show the immediate consequence of the guerrilla: 8 to 11 year old boys trained to fire machine guns and mortars and fight the Sandinistas, that also recruited kids by force. These little guys are already dead, as says the french photographer, recalling WWII. They, too, lost everything. Even their future.

"I don't think so, because he's the one saying the CIA tactics remind him of Nazi Germany." http://illusionpodcast.blogspot.com/2015/10/episode-76-nonfiction-from-werner.html

Herzog has repeatedly placed himself at the mercy of nature, most often facing geographic danger to make his films. This time he's filming amid gunfire. I'm glad this isn't much of a political film (that's not Herzog's style anyway), and more of a humanist one.

It's heartbreaking seeing the young boys learn to march, fire their guns and operate mortars. Many of them have smiles on their faces and seem so carefree. It seems they don't fully understand the mortal danger they're about to face. This is a harrowing, sad film that illustrates the extreme measures taken in the face of violence. One of Herzog's best short documentaries.

The last line pretty much sums it up: "Looking at these kids, half of them already look dead."