The film is careful to suggest guarded hope - one activist suggests such dissolution and violence is pretty much in keeping with a newly hatched government, and is part of the regular process of a country finding its own balance - but doesn’t shy away from the horror of the region’s continued suffering. Along the way, the film makes a strong separation between the arrogant, enormously rich and powerful political leaders (Kiir and Machar are both shown to be hoarding vast amounts of the country’s considerable wealth for themselves and their cronies, while doing next to nothing to help build out the new country’s infrastructure and government systems), and the impoverished citizens, who improbably continue to soldier on, hoping for a better tomorrow for subsequent generations. Culled by Brandon Gulish and Beau Roario, over the course of several years (as the film begins, the country is 960 days from a so-called “unity government” forged between rival factions from different tribes, and led by, respectively Salva Kiir, the President (a Dinka), and Riek Machar, the Vice President (a Nuer), the film swings from macro - the region’s long, bloody history of fighting for independence from its oppressive northern compatriots - to the micro - a mother, Yasmin, and her daughter, Shamira, who traveled by foot from the violent, war-torn chaos of their home village in South Sudan, down through the bush to the relative safety of a Ugandan refugee camp.

Shards of war rhino