God Grew Tired of Us and Cautiva

Last night I caught a double-feature of God Grew Tired of Us and Cautiva at UCSB. The university hosts an Arts & Lectures series, and this week they collaborated with Human Rights Watch to put together a three-day Human Rights Film Festival.

Cautiva follows the story of a teenage girl in Argentina who abruptly discovers that she is adopted and her real parents were killed in Argentina's "Dirty War". While the film is a fictional account, the filmmakers stress that the story is based on actual events, since many children lost their parents when they were "disappeared" during the tragedy.

The film touches on the U.S. involvement in the Dirty War, and rightly so. But we mostly follow young Cristina, who resists the news of her adoption as she is forcibly removed from her home and placed with her biological family. Over time, she begins to accept the news, and through "detective" work with a schoolmate, learns her biological parents' tragic story. Sometimes the film veers in odd directions, but overall, I loved this film. It is mysterious, thrilling, and compelling.

God Grew Tired of Us is one of the best films I've seen in a really long time. This documentary follows the story of several survivors of the Sudanese civil war. The "lost boys" of Sudan have spent more than a decade in refugee camps outside their home country. Some of them were given the opportunity to relocate to the United States, and the documentary follows their relocation to, and integration in, American society.

I don't want to get on a soapbox here, but I have some things to say.

While the introduction to the oddities of American society could be played for laughs (and the audience, disturbingly, seemed to be laughing more at the refugees, rather than with them), asking a grocer if they could eat a cucumber raw or needed to cook it, learning how to use a toilet, or what potato chips were (having never seen any of these things before), were not comedic moments, but gave us a chance to remember how we take very simple things for granted in America.

These are intelligent men, not idiots, and I'm afraid that their confusion over how to use a coffee pot may have overtaken the larger significance of the film: this group of young men survived extraordinary ordeals that, I hope, no American will ever face. They are dropped in the middle of large American cities to pursue a new life for themselves. These are men who feel blessed to be working three jobs so that they can send whatever little money they make back to their fellow lost boys in Africa.

They are puzzled by America, and wonder why no one will talk to them. They do not feel welcome, and spend the little free time they do have with each other, walking around town in a group. Sadly, this led one store owner to phone the police, because the person was intimidated by the large group of men who would come in to his store together. Instead of taking the opportunity to sit down the store owner so that he could understand why these lost boys were not a threat, instead the men were told they could not gather in the store in the future.

As their work schedules limit their free time, they sometimes go for two or three weeks before they see a fellow lost boy, their only friends in their new country. They are lonely and isolated. How many Americans also feel this way? Is there something in our society that breeds isolation? Are we free to be left alone?

There are light moments in this film too, and there is plenty to be hopeful about: some of the lost boys learn the families from whom they were separated during the civil war are alive and they get the chance to reunite with them. John Dau, one of the men featured throughout the film, is especially inspiring. He is a leader in the Sudanese-American community and organizes gatherings and assistance for his fellow Sudanese both in America and back in Africa.

I'm not sure if this film will get major distribution. Brad Pitt, Catherine Keener and others are listed as producers, so you would think this movie would have a fighting chance. If you can see it, please do. It's worth it.