That the teenage Rachel Mwanza can show us, and make us feel viscerally, a bit of what such a child goes through is a miracle in itself.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 12, 2018

It's a parlour trick, creating the illusion of activism while passively watching. Dark arts, indeed.

| Oct 3, 2017

Nguyen's direction and script rarely falter. It's a near-perfect blend of harsh reality and mysticism.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 7, 2017

A powerful and unforgettable emotional viewing experience.

| Original Score: B+ | Jul 15, 2014

It may be hard for a viewer to accept some of the paranormal goings-on in War Witch -- the ghosts, the superstitions, the otherworldly powers -- but they're nothing compared to the realities that Komona has to endure.

| Dec 17, 2013

Atrocity and beauty somehow co-exist in War Witch.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 17, 2013

War Witch doesn't sermonize or propose a solution to its larger problems. It's a portrait of a life. It just so happens that said life is playing out in a living hell.

| Original Score: B | Dec 17, 2013

This harrowing film refuses to let up long enough to let you catch your breath.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 17, 2013

With intelligence and deceptive simplicity, Nguyen injects the discombobulating impact of grief, conflict and PTSD (with the added effects of magic milk), to delve deeper than a simple observed account of a soldier's bid for freedom.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 17, 2013

Being a child soldier is tough to imagine, but Canadian writer-director Kim Nguyen takes on the challenge without many qualms.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 17, 2013

Rachel Mwanza's performance is extraordinary and shows great depth for such a young actress.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 17, 2013

The film is a laser-focused fable threatened occasionally by its drifts into character shorthand, but equaled by a wrenching lead performance by Rachel Mwanza that results in one of the finest of the year.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 17, 2013

War Witch gives us a continent's tragedy in a young girl's face.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 17, 2013

The picture is far and away most effective in its sequences of quiet lyricism.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 17, 2013

...rich in anthropological specificity, Nguyen's film is unexpectedly sensitive and anchored by some amazing performances.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 25, 2013

Nguyen brings the harshness of this world alive not with big dramatic flourishes but with an everyday tone that makes it all the more frightening. This is how it is - how else would it be?

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 13, 2013

This year's City of God.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 9, 2013

... driven by a remarkably natural, unaffected performance by Mwanza. And Nguyen, despite relying a little too heavily on the initial voice-over for exposition, is a confident and sensitive intelligence behind the camera.

| Original Score: 86/100 | Apr 26, 2013

You're likely to ponder its images, its insights into a very foreign (for most of us) location and the tragic situation of Komona (and others like her) for a long time to come.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 5, 2013

Is it accurate depiction of Africa's child soldiers? I don't know, thank God. But it feels authentic to its very core, and that makes it as hard to forget as it is to ignore.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 5, 2013