''Ballad of the Little Soldier'' (german: Ballade vom kleinen Soldaten) is a 1984

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

directed by

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with u ...

and Denis Reichle about children soldiers in

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the coun ...

. The film focuses on a group of Miskito Indians who used children soldiers in their resistance against the

Sandinista The Sandinista National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto C� ...

s. Herzog made and co-directed the film at the request of his friend Denis Reichle, a French-German journalist who himself served as a child-soldier in the

Volkssturm The (; "people's storm") was a levée en masse national militia established by Nazi Germany during the last months of World War II. It was not set up by the German Army, the ground component of the combined German ''Wehrmacht'' armed forces, ...

at age fourteen in the final days of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. Reichle had attempted to make his own film about child soldiers but that project had stalled and he approached Herzog for help. The film is often cited as Herzog's most explicitly political, though Herzog denies that he had any specific statement on the politics of the Sandinistas. Herzog has said that the film is about child soldiers, and could have been made in any of several countries where child soldiers exist.

References about the little soldiers

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* 1984 films 1984 documentary films West German films German documentary films Documentary films about child soldiers 1980s English-language films 1980s German films {{1980s-Germany-film-stub

References about the little soldiers

Further reading

External links