"War/Dance" depicts the restorative effects of music and dance on teen victims of Ugandan civil unrest. (Photo provided by ThinkFilms)

'It is difficult for people to believe our story," 14-year-old Dominic says at the beginning of "War/Dance," an enormously emotional and spirit-raising documentary. "But if we don't tell you, you won't know." And if you don't know, you will be missing something quite special.

To make an unforgettable documentary, a film like "Hoop Dreams" or "Spellbound," you have to be more than gifted. You need an instinct for an unusual story and, frankly, luck. "War/Dance," co-directed by Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine, has all that and more.

Winner of the documentary directing award at Sundance and audience awards at festivals across the United States, "War/Dance" is as irresistible as the soundtrack's African music. It's a fantasy set in real life, and, like all great fantasies, its moments of light are set against a backdrop of darkness and horror.

The setting is northern Uganda, where a terrifying rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army, has fought the government for about 20 years, often using abducted children as soldiers. Members of the north's Acholi tribe have been forced to live in war-zone displacement camps so vulnerable to the rebels that they are under round-the-clock military protection.

Uganda also is a country where music and dance are so important that the capital city, Kampala, hosts an annual National Music Competition, which all of the country's 20,000 schools vie to enter. As the competition's director says, "It's the Olympics as far as these kids are concerned."

These two aspects of Uganda don't ordinarily meet. But in 2005 the primary school in the remote Patongo refugee camp, its students mostly war orphans or rescued child soldiers, won its regional competition and, for the first time, headed to Kampala for the finals.

Co-director/cinematographer Sean Fine spent three months in Patongo, observing as pupils prepared for the big event and getting close enough to the kids that three trusted him with their dreadful stories.

Rose, a 13-year-old orphan, saw things no one, child or not, should. Nancy, 14, kept her younger siblings together as a family after their father was murdered and their mother abducted. And Dominic, a devoted xylophone player at 14, did things during his time as a child soldier that he's been unable to tell anyone.

Although "War/Dance" at times overdramatizes, when these children relate their experiences directly to the camera, the effect is overpowering.

The remarkable thing about "War/Dance" is the therapeutic, restorative effect singing and dancing has on these understandably somber teens, letting them recapture their true selves. "Singing makes you forget," one says, and another insists, "in our daily lives there must be music. Life becomes so good."

Although the national competition is in eight categories, "War/Dance" concentrates on three: Western choral performance, instrumental, and traditional dance. The students embrace the Bwola, the dance of the Acholi. "This is handed down to us by our ancestors," they say. "Even war cannot take it from us."

As the Patongo students head off to the nationals, the film's natural climax, they are excited to see "what peace looks like" and intent on proving themselves. "We are going to show them," Dominic says, "that we are giants." Win, lose or draw, "War/Dance" shows the truth in that.

- By Kenneth Turan / Los Angeles Times