Director's Statement
Behind the Camera,
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.
In 2017, on the eve of his return to South Sudan, he asked if I might want to film it. 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."
"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
It took years to embrace the blurred line between filmmaker and friend. That intimacy opened a level of access I've personally 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 off-the-cuff comments began to shift away from a nonviolent philosophy, I spoke not as a detached filmmaker but as a friend.
"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
