Growing Up on Camera: 'War Child'

EMMANUEL JAL BRIMS with the sort of charisma that only stars possess. But it's telling that his magnetism still showed when he was a 7-year-old child soldier in Southern Sudan, not just now as an adult hip-hop artist and international activist.

The footage of Jal in a late-1980s refuge camp in Ethiopia was shot by a French journalist who was documenting the exodus of people from war-torn Sudan, whose southern area then was what Darfur is now. But the video almost didn't make it into the documentary "War Child" by D.C. filmmakers C. Karim Chrobog (director and producer) and Afshin Molavi (producer).

"We were nearly done with the film," Chrobog said, "and we had one still image of him as a child. And toward the end, Emmanuel called me from London and said, 'Karim, I have this DVD that somebody just gave me on the street; a Sudanese buddy of mine. And apparently I'm in the [40-minute] film — and I'm 7 years old."

It was a serendipitous turn of events for "War Child," though the documentary would have been compelling even without the vintage video. The modern parts of the movie track Jal as a performing musician who's dedicated to bringing Sudan's issues to light, including speaking to governments as well as returning home to find what remains of his family and village.

It's the sort of compelling real-life drama that's tailor-made for a documentary, and Jal had been approached about telling his tale in the past. But he put his trust in a pair of first-time filmmakers.

"What Afshin and I proposed to him was slightly different," Chrobog said. "We really felt that he had a very strong philanthropic, activist stance to what he wanted to do with his life. Yes, he's a musician, but I think for him it was a means to an end; he really cares deeply about issues of education, and about his home country, and about child soldiers and their rehabilitation. So, what we proposed to him was to use the documentary in its most effective possible way and launch a foundation [Gua Africa] out of this film and support him in all his endeavors. I think he really liked that message and gave us the opportunity to work with him."

» Landmark E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW; opens Fri., Dec. 5, 202-452-7672. (Metro Center)

» GET MORE on this weekend's events in Express' Weekend Pass, on newsstands Thursday.