“A PASSIONATE, harrowing drama… There is no denying the film’s POWER, or its frankness regarding the ongoing tragedy in Africa.”
– John Anderson, Variety

“SCORCHING. Mr. Kamara’s lead performance is RIVETING.”
– Stephen Holden, New York Times

“There are EXTRAORDINARY moments in the rebel camp, in which the filmmaking becomes simpler as the psychology grows more complicated, as the boys (and girls) lean on one another and grope their way toward a kind of normalcy. Ezra’s moral awakening opens him up to the scale of the tragedy and brings pain instead of healing. Truth? Reconciliation? Not in this world.”
– David Edelstein, New York Magazine
           
“Unsparing, pedagogic, and genuinely compelling…supplies context aplenty for the armed children springing up all over Africa, fingering the tainted diamond industry that lines the pockets of Northern Hemisphere profiteers while exacerbating vicious civil wars across the continent… Movingly complicates the distinction between victim and aggressor, forgetting and forgiving, while cutting the glibness from the claim that the truth shall set you free.”
– Ella Taylor, Village Voice

“AN INTERNATIONAL SENSATION.” – S. James Snyder, New York Sun

Throughout the world, hundreds of thousands of children are kidnapped by marauding armies and transformed into child-soldiers who help escalate the chaos and madness that has engulfed much of the African continent. Many were already orphaned by years of civil war; they find a new kind of family in the brutal ragtag military that captures them body and soul. Ismael Beah’s A Long Way Gone is a best selling memoir of his experiences as a child soldier in Sierra Leone, and now EZRA by Nigerian filmmaker Newton Aduaka becomes the first dramatic feature to do justice to this frightening phenomenon. Ezra’s story is told in a series of flashbacks: Brainwashed by the military, he’s given powerful amphetamine shots that keep him awake for days, destroy his capacity for conscience and wipe out any memory of the bloody events in which he participates. In 2007, EZRA won the top prize at FESPACO, Africa’s leading film festival.

• WATCH CLIPS FROM THE FILM
• Read S. James Snyder's interview with director Newton I. Aduaka in the New York Sun

FRANCE/NIGERIA/AUSTRIA • 2006 • 110 MINUTES
IN ENGLISH • CALIFORNIA NEWSREEL