Video Collection

Lost Boys of Sudan

Categories:

Genocide and Nationalism Refugees and Emigration

Winner of an Independent Spirit Award and named Best Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival, this film follows two teenage Sudanese refugees on an extraordinary journey from Africa to America, offering a gripping and sobering peekinto the myth of the American Dream. In the late 1980s, Islamic fundamentalists in Sudan waged a war on the country's separatists, leaving behind ober 20,000 male orphans, otherwise known as "lost boys." For those who survived this traumatic ordeal and found their way to refugee camps, some were chosen to participate in a resettlement program in America - a distant place so presumably full of hope and opportunity that the Sudanese sometimes call it Heaven. But what if a free ticket to "Heaven" turned out to be anything but? The film focuses on Santino and Peter, members of the Dinka tribe, during their first life-altering year in the United States. Safe at last from physical danger - but a world away from home - the boys must grapple with extreme cultural differences as they come to understand both the abundance and alienation of contemporary American life. 87 mins. DVD only.

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