Opono grew up to become a war commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army of Joseph Kony. Now, he must fight for acceptance back home. The film shows Opono’s fight for his future, while struggling to come to terms with his past and to reconcile with his family. While Opono pursues a new career as a carpenter – he opens a shop and designs business cards – he attempts to reconnect with the people closest to him: his brother, his uncle and his best friend who used to be in the LRA with him. A daytrip to visit his mom painfully exposes how the scars of war also continue to divide them. One day Opono’s former comrade, LRA top commander Dominic Ongwen, is captured and taken to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Ongwen is charged with seventy counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Questions of accountability start to dominate Opono’s thoughts. Suddenly he gets the opportunity to join the Ugandan army. Opono has to decide whether he will pick up his arms once again, this time to fight his former comrades.

No Place for a Rebel is an intimate account, a journey into Opono’s world, complicated by the trauma that comes as much from being silenced in the present as from a youth destroyed by violence. Yet above all, the film shows the courageous attempt of a human being to re-shape his fate

“The documentary No Place for a Rebel bears witness to the grim reality of former rebels who try to break the mold after their return to civil society. In a conflict we prefer to draw a clear line between victims and perpetrators so we can hold those who are responsible accountable. The reality however is much more complex. This film explores what it is to be a survivor in a place where you don’t know the codes and conventions. Where your neighbors fear you as they have suffered from your violence. Where the people who became your friends and family remain in the bush fighting.” – MAARTJE WEGDAM & ARIADNE ASIMAKOPOULOS.