The Battle of the Volcano Film Difficulty Ranking: 2
If you want to experience the chaos of urban warfare, you’ve come to the right place. The Battle of the Volcano relives the chaos of the Salvadorean Civil War through a mixture of live footage and re-enactments from the survivors. Parts of it are surreal and parts are shocking, as kids with guns take on the Capital City and the El Salvadorean government.
From: El Salvador, North America
Watch: Trailer, IMDB
Next: The Look of Silence, Winter on Fire, Monos
The Breakdown
The Battle of the Volcano documents the final battle of the El Salvadorean Civil War: the battle for San Salvador in 1989. It’s shown through a mix of grainy first hand footage of the battle featuring a lot of young men, and people from both sides re-enacting their experiences from the battle.
The real first hand footage from the battle is incredible, and the best thing about this documentary. It’s reminiscent of the footage from the violent protests in Ukraine featured in Winter on Fire, except the soldiers in this film seem younger. Most of them look like teenagers who have been talked into picking up guns to fight; they never look like they’ve really grasped the seriousness of the battle they’ve joined. In one scene, they’ve stormed a hotel and are in a stand off with some unidentified U.S. citizens. They’re not standing down, and some of them even are thinking about just shooting all of them, completely unaware of the possible consequences of killing U.S. citizens (and possible special agents).
The re-enactment scenes are also interesting. Most of them are a bit similar to the re-enactments from The Look of Silence. First, the battle survivors casually re-live a few skirmishes in the locations where they happened. They’re full of excitement telling us how inexperienced they were and how they managed to survive. However, all of the interviewees, except for two buddies that boyishly laugh their way throughout the film, end up in tears as they reflect on the people they killed and how much danger they were in. As a result, you’ll finish the film with a muddled feeling of the battle and the war, much like the disorganized mess the real footage showed it as.
What to Watch Next
If you want to see more first hand footage of urban battles, check out the incredible footage from the uprising in Kiev, Ukraine on Winter on Fire. Or if you want to see more survivors reflect on their war experiences, check out the chilling The Look of Silence, to see perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide re-enact their brutality. You could also watch Fragment 53 which similarly interviews the soldiers on both sides of the Liberian Civil War.
Or to pair The Battle of the Volcano with a feature film, check out Monos from Colombia. Like this film, Monos features a group of kids with guns helping out counter-revolutionary forces. And just like this film, Monos is surreal and shocking.
','' ); } ?>