If there’s anything more despicable than those who harm children for personal reasons, it’s those who harm them for political ones.
Based on real memoirs and shot by documentarian Luigi Falorni, Heart Of Fire follows pint-sized Bandit Queen, Awet (Letekidan Micael), from the classroom to the battlefields of the Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict.
As a little girl with a warrior’s soul, Micael is intensely charismatic, but the film can’t match her performance.
Offering nothing more probing than a child’s eye view of this “fanatical, fratricidal war”, it depresses where it should devastate; an honorable effort that ultimately fails to ignite.
