This political documentary about protests during the Liberian Civil War is an uplifting celebration of the capacity of everyday people to affect great change.
This political documentary about protests during the Liberian Civil War is an uplifting celebration of the capacity of everyday people to affect great change.
Producer/director Gini Reticker (A Decade Under the Influence, Class of 2006) turns her attentions to the topic of peaceful protest by exploring the efforts of Liberian Leymah Gbowee in ridding her government of corruption and paving the way for the election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf -- Africa's first elected female head of state. Shortly after Charles Taylor was elected as president of Liberia in 1996, he proved to be a hopelessly corrupt dictator. Opposing warlords from the north were
terrorizing, raping, and murdering Liberians by the hundreds of thousands, sparking a bloody civil war, and many speculated that Taylor was quietly supporting them from the sidelines. Gbowee had already lived through one civil war, and the prospect of another was simply too much to bear. Determined to bring peace to her troubled country, Gbowee called on everyday Liberian women from neighboring churches to form the Christian Women's Peace Initiative -- a group dedicated to protesting the war that had claimed 250,000 lives and displaced over a million citizens. The women of the Christian Women's Peace Initiative dressed in white and came out to protest the war by the thousands, even going so far as to surround the building in Ghana where the peace talks were taking place and physically prevent the men from leaving until a deal had been bartered. In addition to proving that peaceful protest could indeed affect change in times of unparalleled strife, the Christian Women's Peace Initiative also helped pave the way for Johnson-Sirleaf to be elected as Liberia's first-ever female president. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
An object lesson in interfaith cooperation and an instructional manual for people committed to making systemic political change through nonviolent means.
This illuminating film by director Gini Reticker and producer Abigail Disney is a much-needed attempt to put the spotlight on a moment of history that still inspires.
A glorious tribute to a bi-partisan sisterhood of Christian and Muslim women fed up with having to raise their children amidst the incessant slaughter, raping and looting of the Liberian civil war.
A glorious tribute to a bi-partisan sisterhood of Christian and Muslim women fed up with having to raise their children amidst the incessant slaughter, raping and looting of the Liberian civil war.
Although filling the watcher with the same sort of outrage that inspired the women to stand up and be counted, this is, at heart, a testimony to the power of solidarity and sisterhood through a single purpose.
The film is brief and not especially creative in its storytelling, but nonetheless unforgettable; this remarkable story deserved to be captured on film.
Some political documentaries suffer from overselling the urgency of their agenda, but director Gini Reticker's Pray the Devil Back to Hell nicely underplays the significance of its subject.
Inevitably, Reticker's style falls into monotony that works against the material. Ultimately, though, the power of that material overcomes flaws in presentation.
No, "Pray the Devil Back to Hell" is not the title of Wes Craven's latest film. Rather, it is a documentary where the horrors are all too real in the brutal Liberian Civil War, started in 1989 to oust tyrannical President Charles Taylor by force. Both sides commit atrocities which include the raping of women and
conscripting of child soldiers. Tired of suffering and watching their children die of malnutrition, in 2003 the women of Liberia organize the Christian Women's Peace Initiative, joining with Muslim women in a momentous display of unity. They practice peaceful protests to get the attention of Taylor. After that, the women deploy their own nuclear option, a sex strike to further get the attention of the men who they feel are guilty by either commission or omission. These actions eventually lead to Taylor going into exile and the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman elected as president in Africa. In the end, while the documentary may occasionally lose its focus, it never loses its power in showing a bad peace can be better than a war.
October 16, 2010
Walter M.
Super Reviewer
Whoa, I swear everything means just a little bit more now that I'm a parent. This is a stirring account of war and peace.
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