Independent Film Festival Boston 2010

The title translates from the Krio to “War Is Over.” But the cessation of a decade’s atrocities by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which devastated Sierra Leone in the 1990s, is only the beginning of Rebecca Richman Cohen’s fascinating, inquisitive look at our international justice system. Dark memories still linger of that ghastly civil war, with widespread rapes, mutilations, and child soldiers pressed into battle. In 2004, a “hybrid tribunal,” created jointly by the United Nations and Sierra Leone’s government, began trying accused RUF officials for crimes against humanity. One name loomed largest among them: the rebel commander Issa Sesay.

According to Chief Prosecutor David Crane, Sesay is the embodiment of pure evil. “I looked in the eyes of a human being and realized they have no soul,” he says, unleashing a torrent of chilling testimony. But Wayne Jordash, the leader of Sesay’s defense team, paints a strikingly different picture. According to his witnesses’ accounts, the accused was a victim of circumstance—a moderate in the company of monsters, who actively protected civilians amidst the carnage. The defense questions the prosecution’s witnesses’ motivations, as well as the media’s need for scapegoats. Cohen’s film presents these contradictory testimonials and conflicting truths, eloquently questioning whether simple facts are even possible to define in the aftermath of the unspeakable.

In addition to candid interviews with all sides of the tribunal, Cohen also takes to the streets, asking larger questions of the people of Sierra Leone. Would the vast resources required for the tribunal proceedings be put to better use repairing the country’s damaged infrastructure? Are such prosecutions merely symbolic gestures, or are they a necessary step in the reconciliation process? WAR DON DON is a film of provocative questions with no easy answers, in a place where truth can be as elusive as peace.

—Vincent Archer