[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

FILM SYNOPSIS

"Lost Boys of Sudan" tells an astonishing tale of two young men out of the thousands of young Dinka boys and girls who were orphaned and made refugees by Sudan's brutal 20-year civil war. For Peter Nyarol Dut and Santino Majok Chuor, having their villages destroyed and families killed, and being forced to flee into an unforgiving desert, marks the beginning of another incredible journey. Their journey to America is one of good fortune but one also of cultural, spiritual and even physical vertigo. The distances traveled by the "lost boys" encompass a world of rapid movement and jarring contrasts, and reveal both great social divisions and remarkable human links in the 21st century global village.
Typically in African pastoral society, young boys do the daily work of herding a family's goats and cattle. That's how Santino and Peter, like thousands of other Dinka boys, came to be away from their homes when their villages were attacked and wiped out by military forces of the central government. For over 20 years, Sudan's government has been controlled by a military regime dominated by radical northern Islamists. These regimes have waged a progressively more violent campaign of forced Islamization against southern Christian and animist Sudanese, including the Dinka and Nuer peoples. Southern resistance to the government has been led by the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA). It is estimated that two million Sudanese have died in the civil war. Boys like Santino and Peter had no choice but to flee for their lives into the desert — without knowing who among their families had died or survived. They formed small bands for mutual support and endured hunger, thirst, burning sands and continued military assaults. They also had to contend with the attacks of lions, which found the smallest boys the easier targets.
The lucky ones made it to U.N. refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. Santino and Peter arrived in the Kakuma refugee camp, where food, shelter and relative safety could ease their physical suffering but would do little to heal their nightmarish memories or their fears over the fate of their families.
Only the bonds between them, formed not only of a common background, but also of the hardships they had endured together, seem to provide the boys — now teenagers and young men — with spiritual solace. That's why it is with equal parts heartbreak and elation that they receive news that some of them, including Santino and Peter, have been sponsored for resettlement in the United States. Already fearing the loneliness and homesickness that may lie ahead, Santino and Peter promise never to forget their comrades and to tell their collective story in the U.S. for all to know. Their friends are convinced the two boys are going to "heaven" and their elders direct them to return to Sudan one day to help their people.
Just how great the distance is between the East African bush and Houston, Texas, where Santino and Peter are headed, becomes immediately apparent when the boys enter the hermetically sealed environment of modern air travel, where such things as airline food are complete mysteries, and the sensation of flight itself is dizzying and unreal. Landing on the tarmac in Houston, they are surprised to see no cars on the "roads." Their YMCA sponsors take Santino and Peter to an apartment they will share with other recently immigrated Sudanese boys, and whose strange appliances must be carefully explained.
Once again the camaraderie of the "lost boys" can help ease their fears and anxieties. They marvel at the endless supply of food and the freedom to eat 24 hours a day. Examining a map of Houston, they are amazed at the size of their new "village." At the same time, they begin to feel the loneliness of being in an alien environment, where friends seem so difficult to make.
They are daunted by the challenges facing them as they struggle to learn English, adapt to light industrial jobs, pursue their education and get used to social customs quite contrary to their own. They also begin to discern subtleties of social status, noticing, for instance, that their skin is much blacker than that of most American blacks, and that this affects how other people, including African-Americans, respond to them. They also discover the realities of relative poverty amid prosperity.
Peter moves to Kansas City and bit by bit, the boys lose each other as they slip further into American life. Can the consumerist plenty and relative security of the American "heaven" ever heal the wounds that separated them from their families and the pastoral lives they once knew, or fill the absences in their hearts? Will the "lost boys" ever be able to reach back to help their people in Africa, still embroiled in the terrors and hardships of religious and racial intolerance and civil war? "Lost Boys of Sudan" is a remarkable glimpse into the trials of two of the world's growing legions of displaced people — and in their stories we hear an elegy for a planet torn by violence.



After surviving a harrowing trek across hundreds of miles of desert, an estimated 11,000 "Lost Boys" found the protection of the U.N. They crossed the Sudan border into Kenya and were taken to Kakuma refugee camp where they spent the next 9 years waiting for an end to their country's Civil War. Courtesy UNHCR/B. Press.


Peter "Nyarol" Dut celebrating his upcoming journey to America in Kakuma refugee camp the night before departure, August 2001.

 

Santino Majok Chuor a month after arriving in Houston, Texas.

 

 

Peter "Nyarol" Dut outside of Olathe East High School in Olathe, KS. He grad __________________


I thought a new title for this thread might get it better publicity, after all, it was actually a good documentary, and my previous thread regarding this film was framed improperly.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

This documentary follows the lives of two [and more] Sudanese refugees who came to the US to get an education in hopes of returning to Sudan to make some sort of difference for their communities. Instead, they, like tens of thousands of African [and most other] immigrants, discover that the American experience is as disastrous as any other. These youth came from a war zone, and yet they clearly saw how fucked up the streets can be here in America, living in Houston and Kansas City. They saw the violence, and were not blind or ignorant to it like the rest of middle America who they were blending with. They had to struggle to get the same bullshit we Americans do, a car, rent, food, entertainment.. [drink sex cigarettes ford cortinas household pets bombs war famine and death and an apathetic public that couldnt care less!!!]

These youth experienced all the pitfalls of American life, they had bullshit jobs [Peter worked at wallmart, where the manager said, "You're African, you can handle the heat" when he complained about being singled out and delegated for parking lot duty. He went to a high school in texas, having to make friends in a strange place, and high school can be a strange experience for a good number of "normal" american kids, let alone a Sudanese refugee coming from a war zone to move into a redneck conservative christian town [oh yeah, they were resettled by a christian organization, which is good, however a large number of the people were condescending, which is bad].....
they were most confused regarding Americans themselves. their testimony, "white people are affraid that you are going to beat them up, and black people, even if you don't know them, will just start a fight with you for nothing!" They had to go the the DMV, one cat got in an accident and got three tickets, had to go to court risking county jail. In this documentary you get to see them experience all aspects of daily life and routine in America, however, keep in mind, that these youth had NEVER seen this kind of life before, and had quite a different vision in their hearts when in Sudan about what America would be. Personally, I think all of us Americans harbor this same dream, and it clouds our actual vision to the reality around us, and makes us blind to make the necessary changes that are wrong with our civilization. As long as Africans, like the Ethiopian community that I have embraced and has accepted me here in Los Angeles, continue to believe in the myth and facade of the American dream, then they will continue to come here, contributing to "brain drain" and more importantly, the classic American experience of tribulation and heartache. The point, is that the civil war in Sudan is not what finally broke these youth, it was the reality of life in the United States in the twenty first century.

these youth came to the quick and sudden realization of dissillusionment with the American dream, one which I myself discovered as an epiphany around their same age [they were between 17-19], and they knew with conviction and had to accept "that there is no heaven on earth."

I think that the perspective of these African refugees and their experience is enlightening to how much bullshit we accept in our lives, like shitty jobs, expensive rent, car drama, the menacing noose of the legal system, and most importantly, the social flaws which continue to divide us all..

[evollove]

I thought it was interesting to see that during the reunion, at least one of the boys ended up a gangbanger. Felt the need to fall into some group, I guess. Add that impulse to the list of bullshit.

[atari 2600]

thanks for the doc infos

someone should make this http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/ny...&o ref=slogin into a documentary

[floatingslowly]

I saw that there was a new Lost Boys movie. it looks terriBAD.

I blame Corey Feldman.

[Rob Instigator]

I have actually met one of these dudes here in Houston.
it alwways makes me think how stupid most americans are for worrying about the dumbest most insignificant shit, like miley cyrus and her photos, when real life is all around and people have to go halfway around the world to live ina tiny apartment in a shitty area of town because otherwise they'd be KILLED just for livin'.

[MellySingsDoom]

Rob I - There's a Michael Winterbottom film which covers similar territory, based upon refugees escaping from Taliban-period Afghanistan, called "In This World":

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0310154/