Innocent Voices

Aroview: The tumultuous upheaval of civil war is witnessed through the eyes of a terrified 12-year-old boy, whose approaching teenage years spell conscription into El Salvador’s callous Government army.

Under a necessary bleakness, dir. Mandoki distills the memoirs of screenwriter Oscar Torres with acute detail and authority, and though baiting us clichés of war-torn plight, never patronises in his adolescent’s view of oppression, hopeful radicalism, and the end of innocence.