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The end of the movie Lost Boys of Sudan reminds us that there are 15 million refugees in the world, thousands of whom have come to the U.S. expecting to find a better life. But do they? What is their life like? How do they get by? How do they fulfill their ambitions? The movie attempts to answer those questions and provide a portrait of a people we never see on television.

The movie opens in the spectacular countryside of southern Sudan, a nation that has been enmeshed in a brutal civil war for over 20 years. Many of the people have fled to U.N.-sponsored refugee camps in Kenya, which is where we meet the Lost Boys. They're named that not because of their age--many are teenagers or young adults now--but because their parents were killed in the fighting. One of the most powerful points in the movie is when we hear a young man describe his childhood and how he was separated from his family. Accompanying his voiceover are evocative paintings that illustrate his tale. These lost boys have grown up in the camps and dream only of a more permanent existence.

Their wishes appear to come true when they're selected to come to the United States in a program sponsored by the U.S. government. Several of them are settled in Houston, and we see their early attempts at assimilating in society. At first, they're just happy to get a job and enough money to buy a used car. But their eventual hope of obtaining an education seems remote. How can they go to school when they spend all their time working? Eventually, one of the boys named Peter decides to go to Kansas City, where he can stay with other Sudanese refugees and eventually get into high school. The others scatter, too, trying to make their way in an utterly foreign culture.

Unlike documentary filmmakers such as Steve James and Errol Morris, who create stories through their editing and use voiceover or archival footage to fill in the gaps, directors Megan Mylan and Jon Shenk are content to let the footage they have tell their tale. At times, that's more than compelling, especially in the film's opening scenes which show the teenagers preparing to leave for America. But in the movie's later sequences, it feels like we're only catching certain moments of their lives, as if we don't have enough context to understand their situations. Why does the film spend so much time on Peter's attempt to make his high school basketball team and largely ignore what it's like to go to school, work 25 hours a week, and live on your own? Lost Boys eventually focuses on the tales of Peter and Santino, and that gives us a tighter picture. But it also undermines the universality of the refugees' tale, especially when Peter and Santino go in wildly different directions. How representative are these two? What about the other "boys" we met? What about the thousands of African refugees who have settled in this country?

To the movie's credit, it doesn't attempt to impose a reading on its audience. In that way, it's similar to the work of the great director Frederick Wiseman, who uses fly-on-the-wall camerawork and natural sound to paint a portrait of a place and people. Mylan and Shenk take a similar cinema verite approach, letting us make our own judgments about what's happening. But that technique can be frustrating at times, as well. The young men often complain about how hard life is in America, but it's not clear whether those are just the superficial complaints of tired teenagers or real groanings about the difficulties of immigrant life. At several points, the Sudanese are asked whether life was better back at home or in America. In almost every case, the movie cuts away before we can hear the answer. The only clue is a plaintive song at the movie's conclusion where Santino sings about the magnificence of his hometown. Even there, though, the movie cuts away to a smiling Peter with his graduation gown on. The problem might be that the movie is too short. Wiseman's epic works often reach four hours or more. Not that Lost Boys needs to be that long, but at ninety minutes it feels somewhat incomplete.

Still, the film is absorbing, beautifully shot, and compelling. Peter and Santino make fascinating and attractive subjects, offering insight into the life of a refugee making his own home in the world. In a culture that spends more time talking about Britney Spears's bellybutton than those 15 million refugees, this movie is a helpful start. It opens this Friday at the Landmark Theatres, 2828 N. Clark Ave, Chicago.   

J. Robert Parks  5/10/2004