Animation First Review: Allah is Not Obliged is an empathetic look at the life of a child soldie

We first meet Birahima, the young protagonist of the astonishing Allah is Not Obliged, directed by Zaven Najjar and adapted from the work of Ahmadou Kourouma, as he's in the midst of an urban warzone, weaving through city streets with his gun in hand, bullets blazing, bodies falling. He's just a kid. Big, expressive eyes, a small frame. He looks like he's maybe twelve or thirteen, much too young to be in a situation like this. In voiceover, he reflects on how crazy and chaotic his life is, how he's been through so much, how he's cursed. Lately, he's started to be haunted by the dead, both those whose deaths he's had a hand in, and the ghosts of loved ones he's lost along the way: his mother, friends, comrades.

Then we jump back to when Birahima was just a kid, a bit of a shit-stirrer living in his small village in Guinea. And you wonder: how did he go from this life to that life?

Birahima's father died when he was young, and his mother has an illness that cost her one of her legs. His grandmother looks after him and his mother, but the situation is tenuous. Something is bound to give. The forces that steer us through our lives, and through the world, are about to shift dangerously for Birahima. He's put under the protective wing of Yacouba, a hot-shot grifter who has been around the world, but for whatever reason is now back in Guinea. Yacouba has style, street-smarts, a silver tongue. In a lot of ways, he's a good person to hitch your wagon to, but there's always the danger that he might push his luck too far. And you don't want to go down with that ship.

Yacouba is tasked with escorting Birahima to neighboring Liberia, where his aunt Mahan will take care of him. But as we quickly learn, the geo-political situation of the region is tense, wartorn, bloody. Birahima gives us a quick rundown of Liberian history, the various shifts in power, and the current state of four rival warlords divvying up the country and vying for more control. Soon, Birahima and Yacouba are captured by one such faction and enlisted as soldiers. Our young hero becomes a child soldier alongside other kids with tragic backstories. Birahima tells us that child soldiers are the most famous celebrities of the twentieth century, and we see in his flights of fancy that he might just believe this is the path to glory, wealth, power. It's a life of chasing and running: chasing better opportunities to set yourself up for success, running from factions that stab you in the back. 

With his fellow child soldiers, Birahima finds a friend group. An odd one, sure, considering the circumstances, but they tend to look out for each other, and care for each other. The film does a beautiful job of reminding us who these characters are. When we see them enacting violence, it's off-putting, tragic, disgusting. But then we're reminded that these are just kids who have had to survive unthinkable violence. They've watched their loved ones die, their villages razed to the ground. They've been beaten, raped, shot. 

It's honestly a miracle that, despite how heavy the subject matter is here, Allah is Not Obliged is so watchable, and so entertaining. A lot of this comes down to having the movie center on Birahima. Even in the midst of all the chaos, violence, war, he's such a charismatic character, and a lively narrator. There's a lightness to the way he moves through the world, but it never diminishes the gravity of the situations he finds himself in. The film feels like is respectfully depicts the plight of child soldiers while also managing to be a movie that won't cast you into despair. It's a truly impressive handling of tone.

It also helps that the film's animation is so colorful and expressive. I especially love how the colors shift in the film's fantastical scenes and flashbacks, where memory and fantasy allow everything to take on otherworldly hues, objects and people swirling together like paint. Beautiful stuff.

Something the film left me thinking about is how possible is it to return to previous states after facing such horrors in the world. One of Birahima's fellow child soldiers, Fati, wonders if she can become a good person someday, if she ever gets to live in a world that isn't defined and shaped by war. For Birahima himself, I kept wondering if there was a way to reclaim his childhood innocence, or if once that's lost, it can never be found again. He remains so optimistic, to an almost childish degree, throughout the film's grim proceedings, that I found myself clinging to that hope.

The film ends noting that, while Sierra Leone and Liberia are currently at peace, there are still more than 300,000 children involved in armed conflicts around the world. It's a staggering statistic, and one that, thanks to this incredible film, will now be top of mind for anyone who sees it. There are so many Birahimas out there who have been pulled out of childhood and dragged into vicious cycles of violence. Allah may not be obliged to be fair in all he does, but I wish he would be in this case.

Allah is Not Obliged made its North American premiere at Animation is Film tonight. More information here.