"The Boy Soldier of the title in Karl Francis's powerful new Welsh-language feature is Private Thomas (an excellent performance by Richard Lynch), a 19-year old recruit who joined the army as an alternative to the dole queue, and is posted to duty with a Welsh regiment in Northern Ireland. An affair with a Catholic girl leads to the realization of his own position as part of a subject nation. And when an incident on patrol results in the shooting of a civilian at a politically 'embarrassing' moment, Thomas becomes the scapegoat, held in military prison on a charge of murder. But he refuses to accept that he is guilty of anything he was not trained to do, and his own war with the British army begins. Boy Soldier pulls no punches. It's a harrowing and emotionally charged indictment of militarism (in all its forms) and of the brutalizing effects of a hierarchy based on class and nationality. But the humanity of Francis's argument is what leaves the strongest impression." Clive Hodgson, London Film Festival