The Good Lie

I am just as skeptical of movies about 'Africa' as the next international-relations-grad-from-a-small-liberal-arts-school, but I will unabashedly recommend The Good Lie. The story follows a group of Sudanese refugee children who find a temporary home first in Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwestern Kenya and later in the US as adult asylees. Based on the tens of thousands of narratives that are the lived experiences of Kakuma camp residents, this movie does a good job of portraying the humanity behind the numbers and news stories. Does it oversimplify things? Yes, of course, it's Hollywood. My biggest contention with the film would be that the 'epilogue' credits fail to mention that conflict is ongoing in the region and that to solve one crisis does not solve them all. The absence of this may suggest that the audience assumes that the same conflict is ongoing, which is problematic, or that everything has since resolved itself, which is doubly problematic. The conflicts currently forcing populations to flee their homes are complex and different from that portrayed in the film. If you want to learn more, the IRC just published a paper and videos on the status of South Sudanese refugees that gives account of the situation through the eyes of an organization that is very active on the ground.

One of the things I appreciate about this film is entirely self-serving in that it reiterated for me why I'm here. It put into perspective the scale of the population the IRC serves not just in numbers (Kakuma's population currently stands at over 179,000) but in the potential, the love, the pain, the hope, and the community of the refugees. Also, the scenes of Nairobi are pretty realistic, and the bits of the camp give a visual of one of the areas I support daily.

So do yourself a favor, and spend the $11 dollars (or whatever it is these days) to see this film. Please don't come out of it thinking you've read the news or have a complete understanding of the 'plight of refugees' but know that it does compassionately tell parts of the real stories of some of the people I serve. And yes, you should absolutely bring tissues.