Genre Drama

Wall of Peace (2023)

Item: Wall of Peace
Rating: 1.0
Author: Ross McLaren

★ — Wall of Peace (2023)

Look, I genuinely didn't want to write a scathing review here. I came to Wall of Peace through my world movie tour, working my way through a film from every country I can find, and Liberia is not exactly swimming in options. So when something surfaces, I want to give it every chance. I want to find things to praise. I really do. But honesty has to come first on this blog, and honestly, this short film is pretty much a disaster from start to finish.

The subject matter is domestic violence, which is serious, important territory. There are stories worth telling here, stories that matter to Liberian communities and far beyond. The intention behind making something like this is probably decent. But good intentions and a worthwhile subject can only carry you so far when the execution falls apart at every single level.

Start with the acting, because it's impossible to look past. The daughter gives a performance in what appears to be a straight dramatic role, yet she's frantic and wide-eyed in a way that suggests she's been directed to play someone in the grip of a fever dream rather than a character living through a recognisable domestic situation. It's jarring and distracting every time she's on screen. And then there's the mum. There's a scene involving her eating that I cannot get out of my head for all the wrong reasons. I kept thinking of George Romero's zombies, which is not the emotional register a drama about family trauma is aiming for. It genuinely looks like a scene from a horror film that wandered in from a completely different production.

But the performances aren't even the most glaring technical problem. At several points throughout the film, the boom microphone physically enters the frame and bashes around in shot, and nobody involved in making this decided those takes needed to go again, or that the edit needed to drop those moments. That's not me being picky. Keeping visible microphone accidents in your final cut is about as fundamental a filmmaking error as you can make. It pulls you out of any immersion you might have been clinging to and reminds you, brutally, that you're watching something that wasn't ready to be seen.

I know this is a low-budget short from a country with a film industry that's still finding its feet, and I'm not expecting a Hollywood production. Budget is never the thing I hold against a film. Some of the most affecting films I've encountered on this world tour have been scrappy, rough around the edges, clearly made on very little. What I ask for is basic craft and a coherent vision, and Wall of Peace doesn't deliver either. The storytelling is muddled, the technical problems are everywhere, and the whole thing struggles to land any of the emotional weight its subject deserves.

It's a one-star film, I'm afraid. I hope Liberian cinema keeps growing, keeps finding filmmakers with stories to tell and the means to tell them properly. But this one just isn't it.

One star.

Rating: ★ | Year: 2023 | Watched: 2025-06-29

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