Director's Statement
Behind the Camera But In the Story
I first met Peter in 2005 at Harvard. We were scholarship students studying public policy, both determined to change the world. Peter wore a suit every day; I half-joked I looked forward to his presidency.
I had just set down the weight of one film when in 2017, on the eve of his return to South Sudan, Peter came to me with something he believed was worth filming.
Peter was on the cusp of bringing together young leaders from South Sudan’s currently warring communities, Dinka and Nuer, to live, travel, and mobilize around a shared goal: ending the civil war, calling for elections, imagining a different future for their country. Some came from communities that had directly harmed each other. That made the premise emotionally powerful and real, touching the question — whether “us versus them” can become simply “us.”
I had come to know South Sudan through Peter, and to care about a place most of the world has never slowed down to consider despite its wars, famines, and a human rights catastrophe that gained the nation “the world’s most broken” and “most dangerous” titles (Financial Times, The Economist). If a place contains the world’s most urgent suffering, it deserves the world’s most urgent attention. I said yes. I thought I was signing on to document a diverse group of activists ranging from doctor to priest to reggae star. But that would all change.
A year later, while deep in the edit of what I thought was my film, I received a text from his wife Nyathon: Peter has been arrested. Suddenly I was recording secret calls from jail, held at gunpoint in Nairobi clutching his only remaining childhood photos, throwing birthday parties for his children in their parents’ absence. I became “Aunty Catherine.”
It took years to embrace the blurred line between filmmaker and friend. That intimacy opened a level of access I’ve never seen in activist documentaries. The dominant theme of our 600 hours of footage is not glamorized heroism, but profound psychological and familial costs. My friendship with Peter also allowed me to challenge him: when his comments began to shift away from a nonviolent philosophy, I spoke not as a detached filmmaker but as a friend.
"I asked why he refused therapy, as his wife and friends pleaded. He laughed, then admitted softly: 'It might make me stop what I'm doing.'" Catherine Kyung-Eun Lee, Director
"Will you help stop my nightmares of bombs dropping on my village? Will you help me find happiness?" Peter Ajak, letter to President George W. Bush, age 16, as a newly arrived Lost Boy
