Trama

As peace in South Sudan hangs in the balance, a mother and her two daughters return home from exile. The mother's mission is to safeguard her late husband's vision while her daughters struggle with what it means to call South Sudan home.

In East Africa, Rebecca Nyandeng de Mabior is known as the mother of South Sudan. The country gained independence in 2011 and has been at war for most of its short history. Nyandeng's greatest fear is that her husband, John Garang de Mabior, along with millions of South Sudanese people, died in vain. After years in exile, a fragile peace agreement plants the possibility for her to do something about the precarious situation in the country.

Meanwhile, Nyandeng's daughters Akuol and Nyankuir struggle to come to terms with what it means to call themselves South Sudanese because they were born and raised in exile. Akuol decides to follow her mother and sister from behind the camera and is forced to confront her own fears.

At the heart of No Simple Way Home is an intergenerational conversation that charts the three women's struggle to reconcile family and country.

ABOUT MAKING THE FILM Official development of the film began in early 2019 after an informal pitch by the film's director, Akuol de Mabior, to the film's producer, Sam Soko, in Nairobi, Kenya. At the time, the political situation in South Sudan was as volatile as ever. It looked likely that the film's protagonist, Nyandeng, also the director's mother, would be entering a dangerous political arena after years in the margins.

Production began in August 2019 with a film crew led by African women, including cinematographer Emma Nzioka, location sound recordist Josephine Obudo, production manager Ivy Kiru, and line producer Ruth Munyiri. They were later joined by editor Angela Wamai who started working with material towards the end of filming. No Simple Way Home gained and maintained momentum with the invaluable support of the Whickers, Doc Society's New Perspectives and Good Pitch, the IDFA Bertha Classic Fund, Docubox, and Documentary Africa. Right from the development stage of the process, the film has been supported by the South Africa-based non-profit production company STEPS as part of a series of films called Generation Africa. The series raises questions about youth and new narratives on migration in an African context.

These questions resonated deeply with the film's director. She had struggled to articulate them for years. She believes that some of these questions will also resonate first with a young generation of Africans and with alienated dreamers everywhere.

Questions for those currently in positions of power: Can an older generation of freedom fighters, including the director's mother, really build countries in which younger dislocated generations can lead meaningful lives, countries that can nourish their big dreams, countries they can call home?