JOHNNY MAD DOG

Liberia, 2003, in the final weeks of the second civil war, shortly before the fall of Charles Taylor. Johnny Mad Dog is fifteen and has been looting the country with a unit of LURD rebels since he was ten. With his troop of child soldiers he advances on the capital. Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s “Johnny Mad Dog” (France/Liberia 2008) shows the daily life of these children without any distance: the killing, the fear, the orders, the intoxication – and a life in which violence is the only language the boys have ever learned.

Sauvaire shot the film in Liberia with former child soldiers who had themselves fought for LURD, non-professionals with no formal schooling, and lived with his cast there for a year. Only they, in the director’s view, could bear honest witness to this horror. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2008. “Johnny Mad Dog” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2008.

Shown at the 2008 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2008 · Film Archive