Product Description

Based on the true story of screenwriter Oscar Torres's embattled childhood in 1980's El Salvador, Innocent Voices is the poignant tale of Chava, an eleven-year-old boy. Chava suddenly becomes the "man of the house" in a time when the government's army is forcibly recruiting twelve year olds to battle against the peasant rebels of the FMLN. It is a story of life, love, the hope of peace, and the ennobling power of the human spirit.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17705 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2008-04-08
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: Spanish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 110 minutes

Review
Innocent Voices is a raw, powerful portrait of childhood spent in a war zone. The images are harrowing... And the emotion feels
real. Padilla's earnest, natural presence lends an almost documentary-style realism to Chava's plight. --Associated Press

Review
It is at once intimate and epic. --Hollywood Reporter

Review
We applaud the director, Luis Mandoki, for shining a light on the plight of children during wartime. --UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman

Customer Reviews

modern child sacrifice
"We here are all scared of turning twelve," explains Chava, "because that's when the army takes you. I have one year left." Innocent Voices takes place in El Salvador's civil war that raged from 1980-1992, but it could have been set in any of the dozens of countries around the world where governments and "liberation" armies recruit child soldiers. In El Salvador, the authoritarian government, with a billion dollars of aid and training from the United States ("They're training our soldiers to kill us."), forcibly conscripted young boys to fight its civil war against the FMLN. Since his father left for the US, eleven-year-old Chava is the "man of the house." The film revolves around the plight of his extended family. Chava follows his Uncle Beto and sides with the rebels, but his mother Kella observes that they, too, conscript their kids. Innocent Voices reinforces the truth that in all modern wars, the biggest losers by far are innocent civilians. Co-writer Oscar Orlando Torres based this award-winning film on his own memoirs. In Spanish, with English sub-titles.

A Powerful, Moving Story.
Luis Mandoki's "Innocent Voices" is a sharply detailed, moving film that tells a powerful human story and documents the horror of El Salvador's brutal, U.S.-funded civil war in the 1980s. Mandoki gives us a view from within Salvadoran society, there are no tourists or foreign journalists playing our guides, this is a view from the inside of a poverty-stricken society suffering under violent conditions. The focus of the story is a small boy named Chava, who lives in the poorest sectors of El Salvador with his mother and siblings. A civil war is brewing between the nation's military rulers and the Leftist FMLN guerrillas. With scenes of high intensity Mandoki captures how the family is caught in the middle of a deadly crossfire and how their lives change forever.

"Innocent Voices" never feels false, the setttings, characters and situations are completely authentic. El Salvador's beautiful Central American scenery is brilliantly captured as well as the cold reality of what the civil war was like. Reagan fans may scoff or dismiss the scenes of utter brutality by the U.S.-trained Salvadoran soldiers, but this is all well-documented, in fact, this is an important film to watch in the era of Iraq, as once again we are arming and funding different sides and trying to crush insurgencies in a complex region with little regard for the human cost. The use of child soldiers here strikes a general chord, as we know this is still happening all around the world today. "Innocent Voices" doesn't tell a story that happened, it tells a story that is still happening in many places right now. Mandoki also does a nice job in showing the kind of immigration that took place from Central America to the U.S. during this time, reminding the viewer that the immigrants crossing over are not lawbreakers trying to make it easy in America, many of these people have stories like Chava behind them, leaving your home is not an easy decision to make.

The film's performances are sharp and wonderful, the story is filled with numerous characters that stay in the memory and moments of drama that stir and move. Mandoki manages to explore the politics of the story without really making the film political, he doesn't have to resort to big slogans or preaching, he simply tells his story and lets the setting and situations display what was happening. There is almost a Dantenean quality to the way we see this small boy, Chava, trying to live a decent life surrounded by horror and death at a time when you were likely to find bodies floating in the nearby river, executed by soldiers. Mandoki beautifully contrasts the scenery with the carnage. Like Oliver Stone's "Platoon," the war scenes between soldiers and guerrillas are well-crafted but never "fun," the violence feels raw and not like some video game exercise. With intelligent editing, Mandoki creates an atmosphere of dread during the violence, capturing the confusion and sheer terror of being caught in the middle of a firefight with bullets flying by over your head and loved ones gone missing as bombs explode.

"Innocent Voices" is one of those rare, small films that you probably didn't know about because the studio didn't blast your senses with endless advertising or hype but it is more haunting, powerful and memorable than most of the big films playing in over 2,000 screens. It tells a story Americans have largely forgotten and don't realize just how involved in it they were. Sometimes we need directors like Mandoki to shine a light on those corners of the world we tend to ignore, yet don't realize the immense connections they have to our history and foreign policy. And aside from historical importance, this is simply a great human drama, a moving story that could affect anyone anywhere, as any good film should. "Innocent Voices" is worth picking up.

LUIS MANDOKI, OPUS 9
***** 2004. Co-written and directed by the Mexican director Luis Mandoki (Message in a Bottle and Angel Eyes). Numerous awards earned in international festivals. El Salvador in the 80's. Chava lives in a village that lies between the Salvadorian army and the guerrilla warfare. He must hide with his friends when the army starts to enlist by force 12 years old boys. While watching this motion picture, I never had the feeling that it was pro-guerrilla or anti-Salvadorian army. INNOCENT VOICES is simply anti-civilian wars if it absolutely must be anti-something. Seen through the eyes of a kid, any war will seem awful even if it is justified by noble ideas. The director manages to provoke in our heart emotion and empathy and cinema is primarily about this. Masterpiece.