Few people outside of Colombia have heard of the Bojayá massacre, which took place on May 2, 2002. In the span of a few minutes, over 100 civilians in that small town were killed by members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, a guerilla organization (popularly known as FARC) that was attempting to wrest control of that region away from paramilitary and counterinsurgency groups. Juanita Onzaga’s hauntingly beautiful Our Song to War, a winner of numerous short film awards at festivals around the world, evokes that traumatic past through the eyes of children. Though too young to remember that tragic episode, they share their stories of familial loss and communal healing in the skull-filled graveyard and on the blood-colored river where spirits of the dead have not been fully laid to rest.
Written by David Scott Diffrient