UPDF to screen LRA war movie

Rebel leader. Joseph Kony.

Gulu. Uganda People Defence Forces have revealed plans to produce a war film, focusing on their encounters with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels during the two-decade war that rocked north and part of eastern Uganda.
The film will be shot inside the bushes and forests that were battle fields at the peak of the LRA-led insurgency and it will take 10 days beginning this week.

The film will be directed by members of the UPDF with support from the Ministry of Defence.
Fourth Division Army spokesperson, Maj Caesar Olweny, saidthe army has already arrived in Gulu from the headquarters in Bombo before setting up the scenes at chosen locations in Gulu and Omoro districts.
According to Maj Olweny, some of the sites which have been chosen are Opaka Forest reserve (found on Gulu- Kampala Highway), in Omoro District and Abera Forest Reserve in Aswa County in Gulu District on Gulu-Kitgum highway.

The two forests served as hideouts for rebels at the peak of the LRA war and they used the forest reserved to strike ambushes especially between 1991 and 2003 killing dozens.
Maj Olweny said the films will be screened to the public who suffered the blunt of the LRA violence.
The army also plans to use the same war film to design training tactics and syllabus in the new warfare.
The long war in the region perpetuated by LRA leaders Joseph Kony displaced an estimate of 1.5 million and tens of thousands lost their lives.

UN child agency Unicef estimates that during the 20 years of war, 35,000 boys and girls were dragged from their homes, schools and villages, and marched to rebel hideouts deep in the indigenous bush and turned into child soldiers, sex slaves and porters.

In 2012, a non government organisation, invisible children came up with a film titled Kony 2012, that highlighted the heinous acts of Kony and his group.