A large cloud of billowing brown dust, kicked up from a bumpy road beneath fills the screen. Suddenly, out of the dark heaps of dust, a splash of vibrant colors bursts through revealing a pick-up truck filled to the brim with Ugandan children, each wearing a blue, yellow, red or green T-shirt. As their bright and contrasting colors flap against the wind in slow motion, a sentimental musical score swells gradually in the background.

The overall effect is melodramatic but beautiful, mostly because we assume that what we are seeing on screen is a real and unrehearsed image, shot spontaneously by a gifted documentary filmmaker. However, as the perfectly-framed cinematography and bombastic score continues to dominate each and every scene, it becomes evident that War Dance is not nearly as authentic and truthful a documentary as one would like to believe.

Rather, War Dance thrives on manipulation and exploitation to tell its story and, like so many Western films about Africa, it portrays the troubled continent in a patronizing and condescending light. The story revolves around the students of Patongo Primary, a school located in an over-crowded refugee camp in Northern Uganda. The school specializes in training its students in African song and dance, a daily activity that allows the children to momentarily forget their squalid conditions.

This particular year, the school plans to compete in the prestigious National Music Competition in one of Uganda’s more affluent cities. The title, War Dance, derives from the film’s two areas of focus with Patongo: how the student’s lives have been effected by the war, and their process of healing through African song and dance.