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.