They were known simply as ‘The Lost Boys’.

Orphaned by Sudan’s brutal civil war, these young children walked as much as a thousand miles through desert on foot in search of safety.  Fifteen years later, 3,600 lost boys and girls would be resettled to America.

Now Hollywood film The Good Lie has brought some of these young refugees’ stories to the big screen. The film follows the journey of a handful of the refugees from Kakuma refugee camp to Kansas, where they are met by Carrie Davis (played by Reese Witherspoon), an employment agency counsellor who has been enlisted to help find them jobs—no easy task, when things like straws, light switches and telephones are brand new to them.

Together, against the backdrop of their shared losses, the Lost Boys and these unlikely strangers find humour in the clash of cultures, and heartbreak as well as hope in the challenges of life in America.

It’s not often that refugees’ stories get the Hollywood treatment, but the resettlement of refugees from camps to host countries is real. Every year, the Refugee Council works with newly arrived refugees, helping people settle into their lives in Britain.