VARIOUS: New documentary about the plight of three "lost boys" of Sudan gets a star-studded premiere in Los Angeles

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie joined Nicole Kidman on Monday (January 8) at the Los Angeles premiere of "God Grew Tired of Us," a new documentary trailing the lives of three "lost boys" of Sudan as they make a new home for themselves in America. Daniel Abul Pach, Panther Bior, and John Dau are the subjects of the film, directed by Christopher Quinn and narrated by Kidman, and are now stars in their own right since the film's glorious debut at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, where it picked up the Grand Jury Prize for documentary films and the "Audience Award" in the "Independent Film Competition: Documentary" category. Pitt served as one of the film's executive producers, a job he happily took after seeing the war-ravaged country of Sudan on a trip, a few years ago. "You see the immense suffering over there, and you come back here and you know how fortunate we are," Pitt said. "You see how little it takes to even change a life, not even a dent in our economy in any way, and you wonder why we don't have more of a focus on it." "Some people are really running for their lives and have been through horrific things and are really willing to work hard in a new country and try to just be good citizens and have a good life, and so this film certainly helps to give that message," said actress Angelina Jolie, a goodwill ambassador with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). "God Grew Tired of Us" director Christopher Quinn began filming the documentary at a refugee camp in Kenya in 2001 after reading about the 20,000 orphaned "lost boys" wandering through sub-Saharan Africa looking for safety. Most of the orphans perished in the five year journey crossing the Sudan on foot to reach refugee camps. The subjects of the film spent nine years in a refugee camp in Kenya and were selected under a U.S. government program to migrate to America. "One issue doesn't cancel out the other, and we need to address our issues at home -- no one's saying we shouldn't -- but we need to erase that idea that they're 'over there,' that they're somehow different than us," said Pitt. Quinn knew that there would be a great story to follow as the "boys" -- who are now all men -- adjust to their new lives in a foreign land, and hopes his film is able to open the eyes of the world to the human-rights crisis in their homeland. "They should know that there are these incredible people like John, Panther, Daniel, the subjects of the film, that are losing their families and being killed and ultimately the real idea is to have it stop, so hopefully people will go out and want to affect change," said Quinn. When filming began five years ago on the border of Kenya and Sudan, none of the film's subjects had any idea that their time with the camera crew would be the basis for a film of this magnitude, with so much star-power to help it along in the country they now call home. "You tell this story to an American, she or he will take it really seriously and do something about it, and that is why I think Nicole Kidman and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are here today because they want to show how good this country is," says John Dau, one of the film's main characters. "God Grew Tired of Us" opens January 12 in Los Angeles and New York.

ITN Source | January 11, 2007

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