Lost and found

Refugee story repackages the American Dream | Priya Abraham

"You'll laugh. You'll cry," is an old movie advertising cliché, but it's true in spades with the documentary God Grew Tired of Us (PG for thematic elements and some disturbing images).

The film works powerfully because it combines so many favorite themes into one story: Inspiring war survivors overcome death, loss, and the immigrant experience to seize the American Dream. Filmed over four years, it follows the lives of three "Lost Boys" from Sudan.

Approximately 27,000 Lost Boys fled southern Sudan in the late 1980s during the country's north-south civil war. As the Muslim government attacked Christian and animist villagers, it soon issued a new, Herod-like order: Kill all the male children in the south. Terrified parents sent their sons, ages 3 to 13, on a 1,000-mile long exodus to refugee camps in Ethiopia, from which the surviving 12,000 moved to Kenya. Wild animals, hostile tribesmen, disease, and starvation killed the rest during the five-year trek ("Lost young men," Aug. 11, 2001).