The plight of child soldiers, especially in Africa, has captured world attention through news reports and personal accounts. Last year, Ismael Beah's book, A Long Way Gone, about his experiences in Sierra Leone, was a bestseller. Now a film by Nigerian-born director Newton Aduaka explores the psychological and social face of the problem, by telling the fictional story of one young victim kidnapped into a rebel force. It will screen commercially in New York for two weeks in February, and also play at Los Angeles’s Pan-African Film Festival.

Newton Aduaka, writer-director of 'Ezra'

Suddenly, the school yard is invaded by fighters dressed in camouflage uniforms. They grab a number of children, including six-year-old Ezra, and march them into the bush to the rebel camp. One little boy will not stop crying, and in one of the film’s most horrifying moments, the rebel commander tells a subordinate to give him the “VIP” treatment. He is shot dead on the spot.

Mr. Aduaka says that incident was not in the screenplay as he first wrote it. “That is something one of the children told me. I felt something was missing. There was no reason to show why these kids stayed on. But when you see that -- of course you fall in line, you don't ask questions any more from that point on,” he said.

The film moves from Ezra's ten years as a boy soldier until 2002, after peace, when he appears before a truth and reconciliation tribunal. It shows how Ezra and the other children are indoctrinated into the cause of killing, and even injected with methamphetamines to energize and disorient them.

The 16-year-old Ezra is played by Mamoudou Turay Kamara, who like most of the cast, had not acted before

Ezra also remembers nothing about the night in which his rebel faction attacked his own village, an attack in which his parents were killed and his sister gravely injured.  Much of the film is about the human relationships of the child soldiers, despite their brutalization. Ezra's sister is loyal to him despite her knowledge that he was among the attacking rebels. Ezra also falls in love and marries a girl soldier, eventually trying to flee the country with her and his sister.

'Ezra' tells the story of child soldiers in Africa through the fictional tale of one boy kidnapped by rebels

Aduaka says the film tries to show that colonialism set the stage for the African conflicts in which 15 million have died in the past half-century. He notes that European powers carved Africa into artificial nations and armed all sides of the wars that followed. “I was interested in what brought about this violence,” he says. “Where is it coming from? It is being fed by arms dealers, by people who are mostly westerners. The AK-47 is not made in Africa,” he says.

“Ezra” makes the case that healing for individuals and societies can begin only after a truthful accounting is made, and forgiveness sought. But it does not end on a hopeful note, and the director says he is not optimistic for many of the former child soldiers. “I always say that if this happened to a child in the West, they would be in therapy for the rest of their natural lives,” he says. “They will cope, because they have to. But I know what they are carrying with them, they are carrying this thing with them, and they will have to deal with it.”