(David Harris) was mauled, he was gasping for air. |
[Writing the script] started as a way to deal with the overwhelming emotions I started having after my memories of the war were triggered by the 9/11 attacks. |
For my family, that was a shameful thing. My mom and sister lived very afraid, and to them, being a guerrilla was considered subversive, like being a criminal. The army committed most of the crimes in our town, but my family felt they needed to respect authority. I always questioned authority. In the end, if we didn't do something, we were going to get recruited, period. |
It was like an animal that would scream in excruciating pain, out of control. |
Kids have this amazing ability to counter-attack what adults create around them. For me and my friends, the war was trying to rob our innocence, so we created these games. I realize now we were using our innocence to rob the war. |
Paraguay remains a country in gestation. We still haven't reached national maturation. We are in our adolescence and, consequently, full of fears and ghosts. |
To survive, I blocked most of the war out. I thought I'd left it behind, but when I heard that song again, the music sent me back to the memories and I couldn't turn my back on them anymore. There was this necessity inside of me to just let things out. |
We needed to tell this story the way it really happened. We didn't want to make a Hollywood movie. We decided, if we're going to talk about what happens to children in war, we cannot candy-coat the truth. That was tough, because for me, man, going back there again ... |
We were able to control the game in the last minutes. We also kept bombarding shots from outside and they went in. |