Ballad of the Little Soldier

Ballad of the Little Soldier
Opening shot of the film.
Directed by	Werner Herzog Denis Reichle
Written by	Werner Herzog Denis Reichle
Produced by	Werner Herzog
Starring	Werner Herzog Denis Reichle
Narrated by	Werner Herzog
Cinematography	Jorge Vignati Michael Edols
Edited by	Maximiliane Mainka
Music by	Isidoro Reyes Paladino Taylor
Production companies	Süddeutscher Rundfunk Werner Herzog Filmproduktion
Distributed by	New Yorker Films
Release dates	5 November 1984 (1984-11-05) (West Germany) 3 April 1985 (1985-04-03) (United States)
Running time	44 minutes
Country	West Germany
Languages	English German Spanish Miskito

Ballad of the Little Soldier (German: Ballade vom kleinen Soldaten) is a 1984 documentary film directed by Werner Herzog and Denis Reichle about child soldiers in Nicaragua. The film focuses on a group of Miskito Indians who used children soldiers in their resistance against the Sandinistas.

Herzog made and co-directed the film at the request of his friend Denis Reichle, a French-German journalist who himself served as a child-soldier in the Volkssturm at age fourteen in the final days of World War II. Reichle had attempted to make his own film about child soldiers but that project had stalled and he approached Herzog for help. The film is often cited as Herzog's most explicitly political, though Herzog denies that he had any specific statement on the politics of the Sandinistas. Herzog has said that the film is about child soldiers, and could have been made in any of several countries where child soldiers exist.

Further reading

• Csicsery, George Paul (1985–1986). ""Ballad of the Little Soldier": Werner Herzog in a Political Hall of Mirrors". Film Quarterly. 39 (2): 7–15. doi:10.1525/fq.1985.39.2.04a00040. JSTOR 1212337.
• Herzog, Werner; Cronin, Paul (2002). Herzog on Herzog. New York: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-20708-4.

External links

• Ballad of the Little Soldier at IMDb