“I was one of the lost boys from Sudan, when just came to American I see a lot changes in my life, because I get the education free and work. I know life is hard but you cannot run of life”, said by Stephen Kong, a lost boy. The movie “Lost Boys of Sudan” that was released 2008 shows us, the audience that this quote is an accurate statement. The movie “Lost Boys of Sudan” is an Emmy-nominated feature-length documentary that 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 on an extraordinary journey from Africa to America. 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. Arriving with dreams of bettering themselves and then funneling the profits to the folks back home, Santino and Peter are quickly hipped to the knowledge that 21st-century American life means every man for himself and that a free-market economy leaves the underclass little time for activities that aren't directly related to subsistence. Santino settles in Houston, working the night shift at a plastics facility, getting into trouble driving without a license and taking care of fellow refugees too infirm for labor; for him at least, old-country egalitarianism dies hard. Peter, a more driven soul, makes his way to Kansas, where he enrolls in high school as one presume, making the National Honor Roll while supporting himself with a night job and pursues his three major goals of a diploma, a spot on the basketball team and a girlfriend. Despite that exhausting schedule, a sister back in Africa still berates him on the phone for not doing enough for those left behind. For both boys, satisfying the needs of the countrymen they left behind increasingly takes a back seat to the nebulous yet all-consuming drives of their adopted culture, to succeed and to fit in.
My opinion of the movie “Lost Boys of Sudan” is that it is great that Sudanese immigrants are able to find a home in America and have a chance to pursue the American Dream. However, there is still not enough being done to stop the large Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, who has been the main group employed by the government to implement this policy of genocide in Sudan. They are armed by the government and sent into various African villages where they proceed to kill civilians of all ages, burn down houses, destroy crops and livestock, carry out mass executions, target vital infrastructure, and commit wide-scale rape. Reports coming out of the region speak regularly of such brutal acts as men being chained together and thrown into burning huts, women being raped in front of their loved ones, and children being kidnapped from their families. To date, over 400,000 people have died as a result of the Sudan genocide campaign and 2.5 million have been internally displaced.
My opinion of the movie “Lost Boys of Sudan” is that it is great that Sudanese immigrants are able to find a home in America and have a chance to pursue the American Dream. However, there is still not enough being done to stop the large Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, who has been the main group employed by the government to implement this policy of genocide in Sudan. They are armed by the government and sent into various African villages where they proceed to kill civilians of all ages, burn down houses, destroy crops and livestock, carry out mass executions, target vital infrastructure, and commit wide-scale rape. Reports coming out of the region speak regularly of such brutal acts as men being chained together and thrown into burning huts, women being raped in front of their loved ones, and children being kidnapped from their families. To date, over 400,000 people have died as a result of the Sudan genocide campaign and 2.5 million have been internally displaced.
Movie Title: "The Lost Boys"
Documentary By: Megan Mylan and Jon Shenk
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