In the summer of his seventeenth year, Samuel Sooleymon gets the chance of a lifetime: a trip to the United States with his South Sudanese teammates to play in a showcase basketball tournament. He has never been away from home, nor has he ever been on a airplane. The opportunity to be scouted by dozens of college coaches is a dream come true. Samuel is an amazing athlete, with speed, quickness, and an astonishing vertical leap. The rest of his game,...

The journey of two teenage Sudanese boys, orphaned by their war torn country, who traveled to America looking for a safer environment and learning to cope with the unfamiliar complexities of contemporary American society.

Their fortune threatened by shifting powers in Sudan and their heir's debilitating accident, a powerful family under the leadership of Mahmoud Bey is torn between the traditional and modern values of Mahmoud's two wives and his son's efforts to break with cultural limits.

At the moment when the Sudan, the continent's biggest country, is being divided into two nations, an old civilizing pathology re-emerges: that of colonialism, clash of empires, and yet new episodes of bloody (and holy) wars over land and resources. The director Hubert Sauper flies a plane into South Sudan, interviewing residents, Chinese oil workers, UN peacekeepers, warlords and American evangelists.