"Beautifully photographed, this film poignantly tells the story of a young Ugandan boy's desperate desire for an education in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds: forty years ago, tribal elders buried a pen, placing a curse on the written word."
Even longer ago, white men came and took away the children to make them fight in their wars, using the pen to enlist them. The boy still suffers from the cultural consequences of this symbolical curse.
Unearthing the Pen is an intimate portrait of a boy's struggle to reconcile tradition with his desire to learn.
