For more in­for­ma­tion or to do­nate to the film, please vis­it www.Nepal­Doc­u­men­tary.com.

This is the trail­er to the new doc­u­men­tary "Re­turned: Child Sol­dier's of Nepal's Maoist Army"

This film de­picts child sol­diers re­turn­ing home af­ter the Maoist Peo­ple's War in Nepal. The film ex­am­ines why chil­dren join armed groups and ex­plores ways to pre­vent fu­ture re­cruit­ment by fol­low­ing the lives of two girl sol­diers and two boy sol­diers. The chil­dren de­scribe how they be­came as­so­ci­at­ed with the Maoist Peo­ple's Lib­er­a­tion Army dur­ing the 11-​year civ­il war be­tween the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Nepal-​Maoists and the Gov­ern­ment of Nepal. The chil­dren de­scribe how pover­ty, lack of ed­u­ca­tion, and gen­der and eth­nic dis­crim­i­na­tion led them to join the Maoists. The chil­dren al­so ex­press pos­i­tive as­pects of their as­so­ci­a­tion with the Maoists, such as re­spect from oth­ers, learn­ing about pol­i­tics, and help­ing their coun­try. The chil­dren de­scribe their feel­ings about be­ing sent home by the Unit­ed Na­tions af­ter a peace ac­cord was signed in Novem­ber 2006. Some chil­dren ex­press their be­lief that com­ing home is much worse than their ex­pe­ri­ences dur­ing as­so­ci­a­tion. They re­port the com­mu­ni­ty dis­crim­i­na­tion and ha­rass­ment they suf­fered back in their homes and vil­lages. One girl de­scribes how her fam­i­ly was so ashamed of her that she was forced to mar­ry a man from a dis­tant vil­lage who phys­i­cal­ly and sex­u­al­ly abused her. Oth­er chil­dren de­scribe how they are work­ing with Maoist af­fil­i­at­ed groups in the vil­lages and await­ing their op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­join the Maoists. This film weaves the voic­es of Nepal's child sol­diers along with ex­pert anal­y­sis and ex­pla­na­tion pro­vid­ed by an­thro­pol­o­gists, jour­nal­ists, Maoist lead­ers, non­govern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tion (NGO) work­ers, and mem­bers of the Unit­ed Na­tions.

The in­tent of the film is raise aware­ness about the ex­pe­ri­ence of child sol­diers in Nepal. The film il­lus­trates how chil­dren be­come part of rad­i­cal armed move­ments and al­so cri­tiques the 'War on Ter­ror' as it may con­tribute to fos­ter­ing more re­cruit­ment of chil­dren in­to armed groups. More­over, the film helps cri­tique the in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an move­ment that of­ten fo­cus­es pre­dom­i­nant­ly on post­trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der (PTSD) and war trau­ma to the ex­clu­sion of oth­er cru­cial so­cio-​cul­tur­al is­sues im­por­tant in chil­dren's lives.

The in­tend­ed au­di­ence for this film in­cludes the gen­er­al pub­lic, an­thro­pol­o­gists, hu­man­i­tar­i­an work­ers, in­ter­na­tion­al health work­ers, and in­di­vid­u­als work­ing on in­ter­na­tion­al child rights. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, this film will res­onate with a more con­ser­va­tive view­er who is con­cerned with the Unit­ed States' po­si­tion re­gard­ing the "War on Ter­ror". This film search­es to un­der­stand why child join armed groups and ex­plores ways to pre­vent re­cruit­ment. This film al­so ap­peals to re­gion­al au­di­ences such as those from South and East Asia.