Will Allen, filmmaker behind a galvanizing new documentary called “Witch Orphans,” looks like most twenty-something artists you find milling about Lower Manhattan — he totes the young artist’s signature MacBook, sports oversized Sony headphones, and frequents B-Cup, a café in the East Village. But he doesn’t go out of his way to look intellectual or make fashion statements — blue jeans and a hoodie do him just fine. He doesn’t force sophisticated banter about new foreign films or mixed media exhibits at on-the-rise Brooklyn galleries. Will is straightforward, relaxed. Maybe it’s the L.A. in him. The 25-year-old budding filmmaker leaves risk-taking for his art.

When Will and I met recently at B Cup, he related his unlikely story — an upbringing from Atheist parents, a college degree in acting, a two-month trip to Africa to document tragic child-killing sprees, witchcraft and an unexpected conversion to Catholicism.

It was during his senior year as an acting student at Brooklyn College that Will unearthed a concept for this film. Researching his college role in The Crucible, the Arthur Miller classic about the Salem witch trials, Will stumbled across a story in the Chicago Tribune along similar lines. It told of children in present-day Angola being accused of witchcraft and consequently murdered by their parents who are convinced (or have been seduced to think) that their children are witches and have brought evil to the family. He dug for more information, but no documentary on the topic existed. He had only one option: he would make one.

Will became obsessed. He learned filmmaking on the fly. He arrived in Angola after what he calls a “guerilla, crash into a place” mission with some camera equipment and a small crew. His Portuguese-speaking friend Joseph Sousa helped communicate in the former Portuguese colony and the team filmed their first documentary, “Witch Orphans.” 

While residing for two months with Joe’s uncle, a Catholic priest there, the team learned firsthand of Angola’s past and present: a bloody 40-year war that ended only a few years ago, and a history of disjointed government. Will witnessed a new wave of evangelicalism sweeping Angola’s people — who embrace religious fanaticism to hide from political instability. Killing children has become a business for so-called witch doctors — serving a ruthless purpose for families overburdened by too many mouths to feed. Will and his crew met twenty-five children at a Catholic-run orphanage in Uige who had been accused of witchcraft by their families and had escaped attempts at murder. But many of Angola’s children aren’t so lucky.

KELLY: When you were filming in Angola, did you ever feel scared?
WILL: Absolutely. Yes. But also there’s this sense — when you’re looking through a camera at something and when you are there for a very specific purpose, everything that happens seems like a hurdle or a challenge. There’s a sense that it’s not a safe place, so you’re already in a mindset of, “What obstacle is going to be thrown at me today?”

KELLY: How does that reflect on the people who live there? Are they desensitized to the corruption?
WILL: No, they’re not desensitized, but — that’s something we talk about in the film. This is a country that’s been in either a revolutionary war or civil war for over 40 years. So violence is part of life there. The civil war ended in 2002. Before that, you were killing your brother, literally.

KELLY: So, in essence, things have actually gotten better? How did your original ideas change once you got there? It seems like this became a bigger thing — not just about these kids. Or is it?
WILL: I think it is just about the kids. But you can’t understand it without understanding the backdrop that this story is taking place on. Right now, if some kid down the street — if we just found out that his mom set his bed on fire and he burned to death, we would be like, “What the fuck? How is that happening?” But there, it’s happening all the time. That’s a challenge of making any kind of film in Africa. First, you have to wipe away misconceptions and take away the idea that these people are “them,” or are “others.” These people became my friends. I don’t think of my friends as a “them.” If I introduce you to Joe, I don’t have to say, “This is Joe. He was born in a hospital. He wasn’t born in a tree.” With the misconceptions we have of Africa, we have to establish a level playing field and tell a story about a human being.

KELLY: Likewise, it’s probably hard for us to comprehend why this persecution is happening in the first place.
WILL: I think one of the biggest factors is the war. And not just that there was a war, but that the war was basically fought by everybody at some point or another. Violence is engrained in the psyche and in the subconscious. People have trouble sleeping because of their memories of the war and of the things that they’ve seen every single day. There is still lots of anguish and desperation in the country. You have a country of young people who have never known peace until just recently. All of a sudden, the higher-ups say, “Ok now we’re at peace.” And you go, “Alright, what does that mean? I don’t fuckin’ know what that means. My home has been a battlefield my whole life.”

KELLY: Do you think that the killing of children and accusing them of witchcraft is an attempt at creating a scapegoat for all of the madness?
WILL: I think it’s that and also, the people have — I think on average — six kids. In America, to raise six kids, it takes so much money. It does there too. So you have all these kids. You’ve known nothing but violence. You have this new, Protestant doctrine — you’ve put a Bible in these people’s hands and the Bible says, “Cain kills his brother because…” and you have Revelations and you have all this violent rhetoric that isn’t understood in a greater context. All of a sudden, now you have a reason to murder, you have the know-how because it’s all you’ve known, and you have justification.

KELLY: What do you mean, justification?
WILL: Well… really it is rationalization. You can say, “Why are you throwing up this morning? You’re five years old, you shouldn’t be sick. You’re bewitched.”

KELLY: How many children have died from this?
WILL: Nobody knows how many kids have died. That’s why we have to make a film to tell this story. That’s why this isn’t an article, or we’re not making an exposé piece because nobody knows, but you can see with your eyes one kid’s story, or several kids’ stories. It’s against the law to kill your kid, whether you say he’s a witch or not, but who is the law? It’s a bunch of 18-year-old kids.

KELLY: Do you think it be stopped?
WILL: I don’t know that it could stop anytime soon without a lot of people knowing that it’s happening, not being afraid to talk about it, and to have a system in place where people have ways to learn. I think with education all these problems fade away.

KELLY: It seems like a lot of the problems are a result of the fact that nobody has access to any money, even though there is plenty coming in.
WILL: Right. I think that’s one of the things that our film gets into. How can you help? It’s such a huge problem. It’s a question for someone much smarter than me. All I know how to do is tell a story and bear witness to what I saw and to show that. Getting people talking about it is the biggest thing for me.

KELLY: Can you share some anecdotes about the children?
WILL: I saw a whole lot of hope in the children there. Pretty much every kid that we met loves singing, rapping, beat boxing. They’re all huge R. Kelly and Biggie fans. They like to rap about what they see, what’s happened to them in life, about how the government is corrupt and they’re throwing their children aside to get to the oil. They’re trying to move up the country ladder. These kids are being squashed like bugs but they see that, and they’re incredibly clever. It was a great sight to see. I also see how affected a lot of their culture and society is by our culture.

KELLY: How do you mean?
WILL: We’re going over there as three white kids, and people are telling us, “My mom put me in a hole and tried to kill me.” There’s a danger in exploiting them. You feel like, “Why am I any different from someone saying, ‘You need Jesus to not be so fucking miserable’?” I can hope that whatever I captured in my little plastic camera — whatever I am as a white guy going over there trying to have answers — I hope those things are stronger than me.

KELLY: You mean like a universal truth?
WILL: I hope I don’t get in the way of what is true, what is really happening. What is so evident to me is that everybody goes there with something — Bibles, answers. I went there with a camera. I hope that I can get out of the way of what’s happening. I could fuck that up. I have an ego. I want to be a filmmaker.

KELLY: What other kinds of films do you want to make?
WILL: Good ones. Interesting ones. I’m actually really interested in people’s beliefs and how religion and the things that we believe shape everything we do. I think you can see that in “Witch Orphans.” People believe these things, but there’s no proof, there’s no evidence.

KELLY: What’s your religious background?
WILL: I was brought up Atheist. My dad was an Atheist, my mom was raised Methodist but we never went to church or anything. I was brought up Atheist but I became Catholic by choice. I practice. I go to church.

KELLY: What brought you to that decision?
WILL: I think to a certain extent everything we believe is arbitrary and based on faith. I guess a big part of it was seeing these little four-foot nuns [in Angola] putting themselves in front of danger, giving up everything they had to live in a shit hole so some kids would not have to live in as much shit as they did before. I feel like my Catholic beliefs take just as much audacity as it takes to disbelieve something. To say you believe this, and then to say you don’t believe this, I really saw that in Angola. These kids were being tortured because of what people believed them to be. Whether they were or weren’t a witch wasn’t as important as what people were willing or not willing to believe.

KELLY: But how can you say that it takes just as much audacity to disbelieve? Usually someone’s disbelief is rooted in a fact.
WILL: Is it though? We don’t have any facts. We just have the shit that goes on in our minds. This is one of those conversations that needs to happen over booze.

KELLY: Maybe.
WILL: I mean, I saw these people who — for no apparent reason to my eyes — were helping people and putting themselves in harm’s way. I don’t know shit from shit, but I know that these people are helping for some reason.

KELLY: It’s likely that this film could set the stage for how audiences and critics see you as a filmmaker. How do you feel about that?
WILL: I don’t think there is a way to prepare for that. The only thing I can concentrate on is telling the best story I know how to do. That’s hard enough. I think that will take all of my energy. If I can get out of the way of this story enough, I’ll have done my job.

KELLY: Where do you want to go from here?
WILL: I have a bunch of ideas of stories that are really interesting to me. There’s a small city in Nicaragua that a bunch of kids live in and it’s a landfill — it has a whole city of people. They make money off recycling. We want to go there and live there for a while.

KELLY: How could you sustain life in a place like that?
WILL: People always say that what America throws away a country can live off, right? You’ve heard that before. Here’s people who are doing it. People are living off other people’s waste. There are human beings there and they have stories and lives. But first things first, and that’s “Witch Orphans.”