Invisible Children (film)

Invisible Children: The Rough Cut (2004) is a documentary film by Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole, who set out to film some of the problems of Sudan, and then learned firsthand of the forced enlisting of children of northern Uganda into the Lord's Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony. It inspired the founding of Invisible Children Inc..

Jason Russell

 * None of us knew what we were doing. We'd never made a documentary before. We just opened our lens wide, and tried to capture any stories along our way to Sudan.


 * After a treacherous journey we finally arrived in Sudan, on top of the Nuba Mountains, and with it came a shocking 130° degree heat — and right from the start, we could tell, this was not the adventure we had expected. There wasn't much to do.

Laren Poole

 * Media shapes the way we view our life. What you see in the magazines, what you see on the TV screen, what you see in the movie theatre is what you know about life. So in a sense media is life.

Bobby Bailey

 * We are naïve kids, who haven't travelled a lot, and we're going to Sudan.

Dan Kidega

 * There's a lot of social evils going on in this part of the world, and they need attention. ... The message from the children is very clear. The children from northern Uganda, they're asking for one thing, survival — peace. They're asking for peace.


 * Nobody joins that fighting force voluntarily, they conscript people into the rebel ranks.

Jeff

 * They are seeking out children, who are going to be the most moldable, and the most easy to — brainwash, essentially — into being a soldier, and in that regard the child of 8 to 14 years is the perfect candidate.