MANGOK

MANGOK is the true story of a South Sudanese "Lost Boy" turned Bostonian who spent over a decade searching for the family he lost to war, and who refused to stop until he found them. In 2014, Mangok Bol learned that his brother and sister-in-law had been killed in South Sudan, and their four children had scattered and been kidnapped in the chaos. With the support of his close friend Sasha Chanoff and the refugee resettlement nonprofit RefugePoint, Mangok began a search that would take years. This film has already captured what many feared might never happen. Three of his nieces and nephews have been found and welcomed home to a Boston community that opened its doors and its heart. Now Mangok is back in South Sudan, searching for the fourth and last child he hasn't yet found. She's a niece he hasn't seen since she was a girl, and we've just learned she's alive and a mother herself. This is the story's final chapter, and we're there to film it as it happens.

MANGOK is shot in a documentary style that is both intimate and observational. Verité footage captures real moments as they unfold, woven together with reflective interviews and archival material that ground one family's story in a larger history. The film moves between past and present, from the stark landscapes of South Sudan to the everyday streets of Boston. Close, personal moments carry the emotional weight, while wider shots place this family within the global story of displacement and return. Archival footage traces the decades of conflict that made South Sudan's 2011 independence a moment of fragile hope, and the renewed violence that followed it. That context makes clear why children like Mangok's nieces and nephews had no safe home to return to, and why this search has always carried real risk. Interviews with voices including Sasha Chanoff and other leading figures in refugee resettlement place Mangok's family within the broader story of family reunification happening across the world today.

MANGOK is more than a reunion story. It's a testament to what one person's refusal to give up can accomplish, and to what a community becomes when it chooses to show up for a family in need. At a moment when Americans are more divided than ever on questions of immigration, and when isolation and disconnection are talked about as a crisis of their own, this film offers something rare. It offers proof, not argument. Proof that welcoming a stranger can knit a community together. Proof that a decade of searching can end in an embrace. And as Mangok returns to South Sudan one final time, proof that the story isn't finished yet, and that how it ends is still being written, right now, with your support.

Our team is thrilled to also share that we've received a matching grant that will match 1:1 any individual grant of over $1,000. Mangok's story could not be more timely, urgent, and uplifting. We are grateful for any level of support.