Beasts of No Nation: parents' guide

Constant, often casual killing: a captive hacked apart with machetes as an initiation, a woman shot in the head at close range, grenades set off in prisoners' mouths, and a toddler stomped to death. A woman is raped, then shot.

Frequent f-words and motherf- (the BBFC counted about 25 strong words), mostly shouted in battle or anger, plus s-words and some crude bathroom humor.

The commander's sexual abuse of Agu is implied, and a woman's rape is shown. Boys joke crudely about sex and women, and there is occasional nonsexual male full-frontal and female breast nudity.

Child soldiers smoke marijuana and take brown-brown, described as cocaine mixed with gunpowder; one boy burns gunpowder from a bullet to inhale it. A commander smokes what appears to be heroin from foil, and drugs are pushed on the youngest boys.

Once Agu's village falls, the film is sustained terror and moral horror: drugged children killing, burned bodies with exposed ribs, villages destroyed, and the boy's nightmares afterward. The performances make it extremely hard to watch.