USA
2011/Digital cinema/85mins
TUESDAY 1 NOVEMBER 8.15 PM – Dendy
On a unbelievable quest for redemption, a ruthless warlord renounces his violent past and reinvents himself as an evangelical preacher.
Joshua Milton Blahyi killed more than a few people as the leader of a violent gang during Liberia’s atrocious civil war that raged across the small African nation for 14 years. Dubbed General Butt Naked and believing himself to have supernatural powers, he fought – alongside his ‘butt-naked’ soldiers – with nothing but an AK47 and a pair of shoes, responsible for the massacre of thousands of innocent people. Once the war had ended, filmmakers Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion followed the man for five years as he found religion, visited the relatives of those he had killed, and searched his soul for some kind of forgiveness.
Screenings at Sundance, Hot Docs, Silver Docs and Melbourne Film Festivals
“A compelling portrait of an extraordinarily complex personal odyssey” Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
“Staggeringly cinematic.” David D’Arcy, SCREEN INTERNATIONAL
Directors/Producers Eric Strauss, Daniele Anastasion Print Source The Film Sales Company
