Steven, a former child soldier in Uganda and a refugee in Denmark, receives news that his missing son is not dead, but now himself a child-soldier. Steven determines to free his son, but things go terribly wrong, and suddenly Ugandan government representatives arrive in Copenhagen to stop the documentary.

Steven Ndugga was thirteen years old when he became a soldier in Uganda. At the age of thirty and now a political refugee in Denmark, he turned to us to have his story told. Shortly afterwards he was told that his lost son was not dead after all: he was eleven years old and on his way to war. Steven set off to obtain his release. But things didn't work out according to plan. Not in the slightest. Steven got shot and imprisoned, accused of rebel activities. Ugandan government representatives suddenly appeared in Denmark to get our film stopped. They said that Steven was a terrorist and that Uganda was now a free country with no child soldiers. In their eagerness to prove it, they gave us access to the head of Ugandan intelligence, ministers and generals; but the more we tried to get to the heart of the matter the more evasive they became.

In a Soldier's Footsteps is a film about Steven and about our attempts to understand his story; but it is also a film about how difficult the road to democracy can be when the authorities came to power through the use of force and when generations of children have grown up with guns as their best friends.


IDFA, FIPA (Winner Special Award), HotDocs (comp.), Odense, CPH:DOX - Copenhagen (Winner Special Award), Helsinki, Gothenborg, Zagreb, Reelworld -Toronto, Britdoc - Melbourne, Hampton