Build a movie plot around this: Where is the journalist from? Maddy Bowen
Set during the Sierra Leone Civil War in 1999, the film shows a country torn apart by the struggle between government soldiers and rebel forces. The film portrays many of the atrocities of that war, including the rebels' amputation of people's hands to stop them from voting in upcoming elections.The film begins with the capture of Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), a Mende fisherman, by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels when they invade the small Sierra Leonian village of Shenge. Separated from his family, Solomon is enslaved to work in the diamond fields under the command of Captain Poison (David Harewood) while his son Dia is conscripted into the rebel forces, the brainwashing eventually turning him into a hardened killer. The RUF use the diamonds to fund their war effort, often trading them directly for arms. While working in the RUF diamond fields as a forced laborer, Solomon finds a large diamond of rare pink colouring. Moments before government troops launch an attack, Captain Poison sees Solomon hiding the diamond. Captain Poison is injured in the attack before he can get the stone, and both he and Solomon are taken to prison in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), an Anglo ex-mercenary from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), trades arms for diamonds with an RUF commander. He is imprisoned after being caught smuggling the diamonds into neighboring Liberia, and the diamonds are confiscated. He had been transporting the diamonds to a South African mercenary named Colonel Coetzee (Arnold Vosloo), who is in turn employed by South African diamond company executive Van De Kaap (Marius Weyers) and his deputy Simmons (Michael Sheen). Coetzee is Archer's former commander in 32 Battalion, the most decorated unit of the South African Border War, made up of Angolan and Rhodesian soldiers and white South African officers. Archer is desperate for a way to repay Colonel Coetzee for the diamonds taken from him when he was arrested and thrown in jail, in the same prison as the fisherman....