Some years ago I saw a documentary on the subject, but this movie is a fictional story inspired by the real events. In fact its content was run by real survivors of the Sudan wars of the 1980s to make sure everything was realistic.
The title is from "Huck Finn" and we encounter it three times, it means a lie which is appropriate for the good of someone else, maybe even to save their life.
The story starts in the 1980s and we see how whole villages were wiped out by gunfire and burning. In this tale three brothers and their sister in South Sudan manage to run away and survive, then head East towards Ethiopia where they had been told they could get refuge and food. The only transportation for most Sudanese was walking so they thought nothing of making such a trip of several hundred miles, and with little food or fresh water.
They eventually meet up with many others headed south to Kenya so they joined them. Their fate was a refugee camp where they could get food, medical care, and safety, but many of them stayed there for years, some never leaving this refugee camp.
This movie concerns the three brothers and their sister who received the opportunity to travel to the USA where they would find work and integrate themselves into society. But there was a problem, they had to separate the boys, headed for Kansas City, from their sister headed for Boston, because of the availability of foster homes.
So that is the main story here, their relocation to a land of strange customs. They are assigned to Reese Witherspoon as Carrie who would help them find jobs. As she realized how far they had to go in this new environment she became much more involved and eventually to try to reunite the boys with their sister.
This is a very good movie and brings home the big issue of internal strife and displacement, not only in South Sudan but in many countries all over the world. Aside from Reese, many of the actors were either men who had actually been young boys in South Sudan or men whose parents were.
The title is from "Huck Finn" and we encounter it three times, it means a lie which is appropriate for the good of someone else, maybe even to save their life.
The story starts in the 1980s and we see how whole villages were wiped out by gunfire and burning. In this tale three brothers and their sister in South Sudan manage to run away and survive, then head East towards Ethiopia where they had been told they could get refuge and food. The only transportation for most Sudanese was walking so they thought nothing of making such a trip of several hundred miles, and with little food or fresh water.
They eventually meet up with many others headed south to Kenya so they joined them. Their fate was a refugee camp where they could get food, medical care, and safety, but many of them stayed there for years, some never leaving this refugee camp.
This movie concerns the three brothers and their sister who received the opportunity to travel to the USA where they would find work and integrate themselves into society. But there was a problem, they had to separate the boys, headed for Kansas City, from their sister headed for Boston, because of the availability of foster homes.
So that is the main story here, their relocation to a land of strange customs. They are assigned to Reese Witherspoon as Carrie who would help them find jobs. As she realized how far they had to go in this new environment she became much more involved and eventually to try to reunite the boys with their sister.
This is a very good movie and brings home the big issue of internal strife and displacement, not only in South Sudan but in many countries all over the world. Aside from Reese, many of the actors were either men who had actually been young boys in South Sudan or men whose parents were.