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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.

Matt Glasby is a freelance film and TV journalist. You can find his work on Total Film - in print and online - as well as at publications like the Radio Times, Channel 4, DVD REview, Flicks, GQ, Hotdog, Little White Lies, and SFX, among others. He is also the author of several novels, including The Book of Horror: The Anatomy of Fear in Film and Britpop Cinema: From Trainspotting To This Is England.