Welcome to the New World

Culture shock: Santino Majok Chuor anticipates the journey to the U.S.

Sudanese refugees face an uncertain American future in Lost Boys of Sudan.

by Sam Adams

As a group of Sudanese boys prepares to leave their refugee camp for America, a friend says enviously, "This journey is like you are going to heaven." But as Santino Majok Chuor eats a last meal in his strife-torn homeland, he begins to cry, worrying that in America, he will be unable to eat, "because of the lonely." Later, as he works the night shift at a plastics factory in his new home of Houston, Texas, Santino's prediction seems to have come true. He fumbles to place a strip of rubber in its plastic frame, the conveyor belt in front of him clicking implacably forward. No supervisor appears to help him, and the worker next to him turns a blind eye, absorbed in his piecework. Santino's life is no longer in immediate danger, and he has been rescued from the poverty of the refugee camp. But in that moment, he seems utterly alone -- free, but abandoned.

Megan Mylan and Jon Shenk's documentary Lost Boys of Sudan positions itself as a work of issue-based activist filmmaking, with captions that draw attention to the plight of refugees around the globe. But the issues Lost Boys raises are anything but clear-cut, and their solutions are equally elusive. Like In America and The New Americans, recent films born of the post-Sept. 11 urge to reevaluate America's place in the world, Lost Boys views the U.S. through the eyes of recent arrivals who expect the nation to live up to its billing as a beacon of freedom and prosperity. If that point of view inevitably sets up a series of betrayals, it also offers the opportunity to reflect on the enduring power of the American dream, at a time when idealism is considered by some a dispensable vice.

Signs of American culture are everywhere in Sudan: Before he leaves, Peter Nyarol Dut, Lost Boys' other protagonist, gives away his battered sneakers and a book on how to play basketball, while an old man warns the departing teens: "Don't act like the people who wear the baggy pants, who do all the bad things." The idea that America might export stereotypes of African-Americans along with basketball shoes is a heady one; it's worth nothing that, for whatever reason, the Americans we see helping the refugees are almost exclusively white. Apart from other recent immigrants, the refugees' contact with African-Americans is limited to a handful of brief encounters: Peter gets in on a game of street ball, but emerges shaken, remarking, "In this country, black people don't play smart -- they play rough," while a black man who approaches Santino at a gas station marvels at the darkness of his skin, leaving him with the friendly advice to "enjoy Houston as it's meant to be enjoyed." (Santino has already confided that, in Houston, his darkness makes him feel "odd.") The whites who try to help seem well-meaning but uncomprehending. After Peter leaves for Kansas to attend high school (red tape obstructs his efforts in Houston), a classmate invites him to a pizza party to meet some of his fellow students. Peter appears to be holding his own until the event turns into an evangelical sing-along, at which point Peter, who knows none of the songs, can only sit sullenly in the back.

The emotional openness of its young subjects often makes Lost Boys of Sudan an excruciating experience; Santino in particular has eyes wide enough to hold a world of sorrow. But Lost Boys is never sentimental or one-sided. Rather than indicting "the system," the film finds more and less well-intentioned people at every level of authority. A public housing official in Houston supports Santino when he says he paid his rent with a money order that has since disappeared, but in Kansas, Peter's college counselor gets a few sentences into his written life story before callously remarking, "This is kind of a sad thing to read." (He's just gotten to the point where Peter's 0father is massacred along with most of their village.) From an activist point of view, the film's focus on individual encounters rather than systemic deficiencies might be considered a weakness, since it reinforces the idea that dealing with immigrants is a "personal" issue. But as filmmaking, it's extremely effective, depriving viewers of the option to shift blame to their government or institutions. Lost Boys doesn't imply that sensitivity will save the day, but it does suggest that Americans have become so immersed in their own culture that they've lost the ability to deal with people whose experience doesn't mirror, or at least mimic, their own.

LOST BOYS OF SUDAN

Directed by Megan Mylan and Jon Shenk A Shadow Distribution release Opens Friday at Ritz Bourse

RECOMMENDED

-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there