1
00:00:11,636 --> 00:00:14,549
For whom? How many? When?
And why?

2
00:00:15,464 --> 00:00:17,628
Against who? How? Against what?

3
00:00:18,273 --> 00:00:20,340
Enough of your violence...

4
00:00:23,136 --> 00:00:25,658
Where are you from?
Where are you going?

5
00:00:26,496 --> 00:00:30,200
Who are you? Who do you pray to?
Please be silent.

6
00:00:46,917 --> 00:00:49,910
These Lebanese children are playing war
like children all over the world.

7
00:00:50,566 --> 00:00:54,166
They imitate street combat
the same way others imitate

8
00:00:54,717 --> 00:00:57,017
the Westerns they saw on TV.

9
00:00:58,245 --> 00:01:00,445
But here, every one of these children

10
00:01:00,753 --> 00:01:03,614
has lost a father,
a mother,

11
00:01:04,140 --> 00:01:06,463
a brother,
a sister.

12
00:01:08,023 --> 00:01:11,023
In their games they’re not
recreating the fiction of a film,

13
00:01:11,396 --> 00:01:13,196
but the daily reality of Beirut.

14
00:01:14,517 --> 00:01:17,397
They’re playing “Phalangists against
the left-wing and the Palestinians.”

15
00:01:18,523 --> 00:01:20,523
This is not cowboys and Indians.

16
00:01:20,932 --> 00:01:23,078
Their weapons all look the same,

17
00:01:23,593 --> 00:01:25,593
But they already know that a Kalashnikov

18
00:01:26,149 --> 00:01:28,860
is not a Factorio, or a Siminoff.

19
00:01:36,427 --> 00:01:39,591
A child that dies at the end of your gun

20
00:01:40,987 --> 00:01:43,974
Is a child...
...that dies

21
00:01:47,566 --> 00:01:51,566
How terrible to have to choose
between two types of innocence...

22
00:01:55,702 --> 00:01:59,787
How terrible it is to have,
as an enemy,

23
00:02:00,196 --> 00:02:04,500
the laughter of childhood.

24
00:02:10,427 --> 00:02:13,760
Last summer the children
from the Lebanese high society

25
00:02:14,117 --> 00:02:16,217
built sandcastles on this beach.

26
00:02:16,681 --> 00:02:19,301
Today, the poor children,
who escaped

27
00:02:19,473 --> 00:02:22,286
the Phalangist massacre
in the Karantina neighborhood,

28
00:02:22,921 --> 00:02:24,237
are digging trenches.

29
00:02:28,760 --> 00:02:30,460
20,000 dead in Lebanon this year.

30
00:02:30,762 --> 00:02:34,562
Thousands of children traumatised,
so obsessed by war and death,

31
00:02:35,247 --> 00:02:36,947
that war is the only game they know.

32
00:02:45,074 --> 00:02:46,574
War is their only game,

33
00:02:47,315 --> 00:02:49,315
These wooden weapons
are their only toys.

34
00:02:50,034 --> 00:02:54,134
The sun, the beach,
a holiday setting,

35
00:02:54,445 --> 00:02:56,945
helps forget that while
some are barefoot,

36
00:02:57,443 --> 00:02:59,210
it isn't to play in the sand,

37
00:02:59,474 --> 00:03:01,793
but because they can't
afford to buy shoes.

38
00:03:09,802 --> 00:03:12,202
All that they have to survive

39
00:03:12,466 --> 00:03:15,382
are charity clothes,
a ration card,

40
00:03:16,747 --> 00:03:19,400
and the aggressiveness that
they express in these games.

41
00:03:26,327 --> 00:03:29,100
But you only have to interrupt
their play fighting a moment,

42
00:03:29,430 --> 00:03:31,830
to realise they have not
forgotten reality.

43
00:03:35,511 --> 00:03:37,125
I love playing war games...

44
00:03:37,264 --> 00:03:39,818
so that when I’m older,
I can become a Fidain

45
00:03:41,423 --> 00:03:43,842
- I like playing war games.
- Why?

46
00:03:45,276 --> 00:03:48,747
-Why do you like playing war games?
-Because I like shooting.

47
00:03:50,017 --> 00:03:52,596
Why do you like shooting?

48
00:03:53,010 --> 00:03:55,569
We’re training as well,
and shooting at each other.

49
00:03:56,274 --> 00:03:58,689
What do you want to be when you grow up?

50
00:03:59,573 --> 00:04:01,231
God only knows, we might be dead.

51
00:04:05,753 --> 00:04:08,806
Refugees in their own country,
these pictures show

52
00:04:08,968 --> 00:04:12,119
that through war,
their old games have become

53
00:04:12,307 --> 00:04:13,463
a dream.

54
00:04:49,111 --> 00:04:51,311
Certain details,
certain attitudes,

55
00:04:51,866 --> 00:04:53,829
certain gestures that are
a little too precise,

56
00:04:53,853 --> 00:04:57,037
destroy the pretence
and the childish playfulness.

57
00:05:03,602 --> 00:05:05,302
They’re between 6 and 12 years old,

58
00:05:05,404 --> 00:05:08,264
all day long they repeat
the scenes of horror

59
00:05:08,525 --> 00:05:10,525
that they’ve seen with their own eyes.

60
00:06:45,087 --> 00:06:48,187
I'm afraid they’ll come
and kill us in our homes.

61
00:06:49,466 --> 00:06:53,164
Anyone who stayed at home was killed,
but we managed to escape.

62
00:06:53,366 --> 00:06:55,833
They didn’t stop us, they let us go.

63
00:06:56,102 --> 00:06:59,989
In the end we surrendered
and went to Sidon.

64
00:07:00,637 --> 00:07:03,357
I was scared when the shooting started.

65
00:07:04,722 --> 00:07:07,207
When the shooting started we got scared.

66
00:07:07,362 --> 00:07:10,928
You become... afraid of the war.

67
00:07:11,267 --> 00:07:14,820
You can’t run anymore....
when you need to run away.

68
00:07:15,036 --> 00:07:17,336
I love war games.

69
00:07:18,661 --> 00:07:20,561
When I grow up I want to be a Fidain.

70
00:07:21,878 --> 00:07:24,933
Right now I’d like to go to school...

71
00:07:25,344 --> 00:07:27,683
but they’re not opening the schools.

72
00:07:28,463 --> 00:07:31,063
I’ll become a Fidain
and avenge my father.

73
00:07:54,059 --> 00:07:56,516
These children aren’t playing,
they're training.

74
00:07:56,805 --> 00:08:00,149
Different political factions take them
when they’re very young.

75
00:08:20,245 --> 00:08:23,880
Ali is 6 years old, Mooz 10, Mustafa 11,

76
00:08:24,284 --> 00:08:28,684
Nawal 8, Walid 7, Nawaf 6...

77
00:08:29,029 --> 00:08:31,804
They have never really been children.

78
00:08:32,092 --> 00:08:36,036
At 10 years old, handling guns,
they already look like adults.

79
00:08:50,452 --> 00:08:53,418
In fact, even before
coming to the training,

80
00:08:53,922 --> 00:08:56,022
they already know
how to handle guns.

81
00:08:56,969 --> 00:08:58,526
Every Lebanese is armed,

82
00:08:58,745 --> 00:09:02,693
and at home they’re taught how to
assemble and dissemble a gun.

83
00:09:42,345 --> 00:09:44,722
This little hand belongs to
a 6 year old boy,

84
00:09:45,051 --> 00:09:47,292
who can already load a gun, Ali.

85
00:09:56,630 --> 00:09:59,216
And yet, it doesn’t take much,

86
00:09:59,626 --> 00:10:02,024
for them to play at
something other than death:

87
00:10:02,530 --> 00:10:05,730
a few sheets of paper,
some markers we gave out...

88
00:10:07,292 --> 00:10:09,904
But the pictures are always about war.

89
00:10:45,061 --> 00:10:47,205
I want to go to school.
Every day I ask,

90
00:10:47,306 --> 00:10:49,796
and she says, “No, there’s no school.”

91
00:10:50,443 --> 00:10:52,149
- Why not?
- I don’t know.

92
00:10:52,298 --> 00:10:54,458
Every day they tell us:
“Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.”

93
00:10:54,575 --> 00:10:57,015
Today they say “tomorrow”
and tomorrow they’ll say “tomorrow.”

94
00:11:00,276 --> 00:11:02,113
They say: I was kidnapped,

95
00:11:02,285 --> 00:11:05,949
they taught me sadness
with blood, and they aged me,

96
00:11:06,411 --> 00:11:08,411
although I'm just a child.

97
00:11:09,614 --> 00:11:11,614
(smld)