We Come As Friends

Six years in the making, Hubert Sauper’s We Come As Friends observes
the precarious start of South Sudan, the African continent’s newest
country. With an eye for both haunting beauty and sorrow, the film
captures South Sudan’s earliest days of independence, the rapid
exploitation of its natural resources by the world’s superpowers, the
displacement of its people from their ancestral homelands, and the
devastating descent into war.

In a tiny, homemade tin and canvas
airplane, through surreal and surprising encounters, Sauper explores the
human landscape of the fledgling country – Chinese oil workers, UN
peacekeepers, Sudanese warlords, American evangelicals, displaced
farmers and their families – to capture all their thoughts and dreams
for South Sudan’s future.