Worksheet: The Lost’s Boys Cultural Identity

Title of the documentary: God Grew Tired of Us

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GqS02osOT4

Directed by Christopher Dillon Quinn

Produced by Molly Bradford Pace, Christopher Dillon Quinn, Tom Walker
Starring: John Dau, Daniel Abul Pach, Panther Bior
Narrator: Nicole Kidman
Music by Gary Calamar, Jamie Saft
Cinematography: Bunt Young
Edited by Johanna Giebelhaus, Geoffrey Richman
Release date: 2006
Running time: 86 minutes

Awards:
At the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, the film won both the "Grand Jury Prize: Documentary"
and the "Audience Award" in the "Independent Film Competition: Documentary" category.
The film also won best documentary at the Deauville Film Festival in France and the Galway
Film Festival in Ireland.
Christopher Dillon Quinn was awarded The Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award by the
International Documentary Association in 2007 for directing God Grew Tired of Us.

Synopsis:
God Grew Tired of Us chronicles the arduous journey of three young Southern Sudanese
men, John Bul Dau, Daniel Pach and Panther Bior, to the United States where they strive for
a brighter future. As young boys in the 1980s, they had walked a thousand miles to escape
their war-ridden homeland, and then had to make another arduous journey to escape
Ethiopia.

During the five years they walked in search of safety, thousands died from starvation,
dehydration, bomb raids and genocidal murder. Finally, they found relative safety in Kenya’s
Kakuma refugee camp. In 2001, 3,600 lost boys, including John, Daniel and Panther, were
invited by the United States to live in America. Assisted by Catholic Charities International,
the three boys uproot their lives and once again embark on a journey, leaving behind
thousands of other refugees who, during their traumatic odyssey, have become their adopted
extended family. They must now learn to adapt to the shock of being thrust into the
economically intense culture of the United States. They dedicate themselves to doing
whatever they can do to help those they left behind in Kakuma, and to discover the fate of
their parents and family.

The title comes from a statement by John, in expressing that he thought the suffering and
killings he saw during his country's civil war may have been the final judgment on the earth
spoken of in the Bible, because "God was tired of us," "tired of the bad things the people
were doing."

God Grew Tired of Us was produced, written and directed by Christopher Dillon Quinn and
narrated by Nicole Kidman; the executive producer was Brad Pitt. The title of the
documentary is a quote from John Dau discussing the despair he and other Sudanese felt
during the civil war.
Worksheet: The Lost’s Boys Cultural Identity

Watch the whole film then answer the questions below.

1. What have you learned about Dinka culture? What markers (obilježja kulture) are
representative of Dinka culture?

2. What values do the Lost Boys hold?

3. What questions and fears do the Lost Boys have about life in the United States?

4. What are some of the challenges the Lost Boys encounter?

5. How do the Lost Boys adapt to life in the United States, in terms both assimilation and
acculturation?

6. What community-building strategies have the Lost Boys practiced both within the refugee
camps and once resettled in the United States?

7. What community-building strategies have been practiced among the Lost Boys and the
communities into which they settled?

8. What sense of responsibility do the Lost Boys feel toward each other and toward their
families and friends still in Africa?

9. In what ways are they trying to improve their own lives and those of their families and
friends?

10. What about the Lost Girls of Sudan? They are not in the movie. Do a research and write
what you have found out? Think about how culture and its values in this particular society
affected the lives of the girls.

11. What was most surprising for you to learn / observe about the topic, movie itself and
about yourself?