Hollywood actress Reese Witherspoon chose a subdued role in her latest film "The Good Lie," a drama about Sudanese refugee children who end up in America, but there is nothing small in what she hopes to convey.
"There is a beautiful message throughout: We are all the same," said Witherspoon, who plays employment counsellor Carrie Davis in the movie that made its Washington premiere on Wednesday.
"We all deal with conflict and seemingly bear the unbearable in our lives, but we have to do it together," she said of the story of children who flee Sudan's unrelenting ethnic violence. "We have to be there together. We have to be there for each other."
The film, by "Boardwalk Empire" writer Margaret Nagle and Canadian director Philippe Falardeau, stars Sudanese actors Arnold Oceng, Emmanuel Jal, Ger Duany and Kuoth Wiel— each of whom has a personal story about Sudan and its civil war.
Based on experiences of actual Sudanese refugees in the sprawling Kakuma camp in Kenya, the film begins with the journey of siblings who survive an attack on their village and walk hundreds of miles to a United Nations camp, gaining and losing companions along the way.
There they make it onto a humanitarian flight to the United States where the three men are resettled in a strange new land.
For different reasons, Witherspoon's character is as lost as the refugees.
“When I met with the director, he said 'I want you to understand that this isn't a movie about you. This is about the Sudanese,'" said Witherspoon, who doesn't appear until more than 30 minutes into the film.
"We didn't try to turn it into an American actor vehicle. I wanted my character to be just as lost but in a different way."
Rather than "a character who is this great white hope who is saving African people, she is actually just as emotionally distraught," said Witherspoon. "She is without her family."
The film is scheduled to be released on October 3, 2014.
