No happy ending

Charlie Courtauld reviewing Children of Beslan in The Independent on Sunday, 4 September 2005:

One year on from the siege of School No 1 - the three-day terrorist attack which left 371 dead - the surviving youngsters relived the nightmare in their own words. Stripped of voice-over, the film was stark in it's simplicity: just children speaking, with translation via subtitles. A few years ago - before The Second Russian Revolution - programme-makers might have shied from the prospect of an all-subtitle show. No longer, thank goodness: for programmes like this - where cadence counts for so much - subtitles are infinitely preferable to voiced translation. Those left in Beslan displayed dreadful survivors' guilt: "We're serious now," one boy asserted. "We don't fight. We're gorwn-ups." I guess he was eight.

There was no mawkish happy ending either. These children won't forgive or forget. One girl, Laima, draws endless pictures of the terrorists -- and then burns them: "It's impossible to get enough revenge," she insists.