Theatre of Violence: Film captures controversial trial of Dominic Ongwen

The National speaks to director Emil Langballe about the issues surrounding the trial of the Ugandan victim-turned-war-criminal

Theatre of Violence looks at the circumstances surrounding the life of former child soldier Dominic Ongwen. Photo: Made in Copenhagen

Emil Langballe and Lukasz Konopa’s unsettling documentary Theatre of Violence delves into the trial of Dominic Ongwen. He was just nine years old when the Lord Resistance Army terrorist group abducted him and killed his parents.

Joseph Kony’s guerrilla group then brainwashed the boy and forced him to kill others. Thirty years later, Ongwen surrendered to the authorities and stood accused of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The picture, which had its world-premier at CPH:DOX earlier this year, was screened on Monday at Malmo’s Nordisk Panorama.

“Lukasz [Konopa] and I went to the same film school in the UK", Langballe tells The National, "and we’ve always been interested in making something together since we share the same ideas and filmmaking values. Then I was in Uganda in 2016 as a photographer shooting a Danish documentary series about the civil war and I heard about Ongwen’s trial when it was about to start,”.

Langballe and Konopa were fascinated by Ongwen’s “dual status of victim and perpetrator,” but they were also curious to find out more about why some Ugandans were critical of the way the trial was conducted by the ICC.

“Back then, my friend worked as a teacher in a film school [in Uganda]. He also heard about the trial, so we started to discuss it and suggested the idea of approaching ICC to make a film about it.”

When asked how they managed to structure their work on such a broad subject and give it a coherent, intelligible form, Langballe says: “It took a lot of effort. First of all, we had thousands of hours of archive footage provided by the ICC. They record every trial with eight cameras. Then we went to Uganda to hear what locals thought about the case and talked to some of the parties involved in it, including Ongwen’s family members.”

“We had five shooting trips, and in between those we’ve been trying to piece the film together by writing and editing. It has been an on-going process, and we went through three stages of editing. We also played around the contrast between The Hague and Uganda, how these two very different worlds collided.”

Langballe reveals they got in touch with Krispus Ayena, Ongwen’s main defence lawyer, by pure chance. “We rang the ICC and the receptionist told us he was just walking past the desk.”

The receptionist handed the phone over to Ayena, who told them: “I understand why you’re fascinated about the case, and I am too. You should come to The Hague as soon as you can. “

Ayena, a former Ugandan MP, is a victim himself, as he had family members abducted by the LRA. “But he also believes in the idea of restorative justice. He also had a great knowledge of the history of Uganda so we didn’t want to use him much as a protagonist but merely as a ‘guide’ to walk through this very complex story,” says Langballe.

It took a year and a half for Langballe and Konopa to gain access to the prosecution team within the ICC premises. “Access was still very limited, so all the scenes we shot ended up being in the final cut, ” he says.

Other challenges the creative duo faced included moving safely around Uganda with the help of locals and consultants on the ground and hiding the identity of some of the people involved in the trial: “We had to find workarounds. For instance, at some point you can hear the voice of one of the witnesses and then we only show the reaction shots of the people who are listening to her.”

Throughout the film, Ayena stresses the idea that “the White men and the Western world” should understand that “there is a problem in Uganda” and that Ongwen and the community he lived in belonged to "a pre-industrialised world” – suggesting these two elements are of primary importance when it comes to judging his crimes.

Commenting on Ayena’s statements, Langballe highlights how hard it must have been for “judges coming from totally different backgrounds” to handle this case, and for them to realise what Ongwen went through and how he was indoctrinated and turned into a killing machine by the LRA.

“Of course, I sympathise with the victims. But I’m very ambiguous about the whole case, and whether Ongwen should be found guilty or not. I can’t help but think we’re dealing with someone who is a victim too, who was kidnapped at the age of 9 and then kept prisoner for so many years,” he says.

“Looking at what he went through, I don’t think he can be a normally functioning [human being]. He must have suffered from it, and there’s a difference between being guilty and being held responsible, in some way. I think it’s difficult holding him responsible because he was kidnapped and indoctrinated at such a young age. That’s the big question [the film left me with]: Can we as a society just punish him?”

In 2021, the ICC sentenced Ongwen to 25 years in prison.