Last summer for its "Perspectives" series, CNN presented the documentary film "Exodus," made by Sorious Samura. Sorious, from Sierra Leone, said of that film: "To try and tell a story like this means witnessing tragedy and sometime playing with death. . . . I was never sure we'd return in one piece." That production won for Sorious in 2001 the Best TV Documentary Award of One World Media. He had captured the same award the previous year for his acclaimed film "Cry Freetown," which showed shocking civil war atrocities in Sierra Leone.
Early this year, CNN aired the followup film "Return to Freetown," written and presented by Sorious. Telephoning from London, Sorious spoke of what he had seen happen in Sierra Leone, and of his desire to make the world aware, through film, of a massive, widely overlooked, savage tragedy of our immediate times.
In "Cry Freetown," Sorious looked into the practices of the Revolutionary United Front, which raided villages and abducted children as young as 7, fed them raw gunpowder, drugged them and trained them to murder. Over a period of 10 years of civil war, he said, these victimized children were turned into efficient, vicious killers known as the Small Boy Unit.