by MATTHEW HAYS

During and after the horrors of the Balkan war in the early ’90s, the issue of mass rape as a form of warfare drew greater media attention. Finally, the tactic was being recognized officially as a war crime, one that needed to be addressed specifically.

In War Babies, the thoughtful feature-length documentary by Raymonde Provencher, the filmmaker delves beyond the war rape stats to look at the children who were born as a result of the acts. As might be expected, this examination is often intensely sad, but Provencher, in showing us the effects of the acts, also shows us how many of these children have worked to come to terms with their origins.

Provencher criss-crosses the globe in order to present a series of profiles. There’s Mrs. Chung, an 80-year-old Korean woman who became pregnant after being repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers during WWII. She recounts how her son only recently learned of how he was conceived. Perhaps the subject seemingly most damaged is Nusreta, who speaks to the camera through a mask. Still afraid to speak openly, Nusreta discusses the ongoing mental anguish she suffers after being brutally and repeatedly raped for hours during the Balkan war. She confesses to hitting her husband, beating her son (a result of the rape) and feeling nothing but hatred for all men.

One of War Babies’ subjects, Hailing Martines, has even established contact with the man she believes to be her father. The camera captures Martines and her mother arguing about the man, with mom bristling with emotion as daughter hints dad might actually have a good side.

Running throughout this exceptional documentary is Ryan, a Waterloo-based young adoptee of Pakistani descent. Like the others, his identity bears the scars of his origins. But in what is one of the film’s only points of emotional relief, we see Ryan coming to terms with his anguish and moving on. It’s a lonely, hopeful moment in a standout documentary. :

War Babies screens this weekend
in its French version at Ex-Centris

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