John Dau in "God Grew Tired of Us"

Angelina Jolie wasn’t at the Oscar rites in Los Angeles the other night. She was in Chad, in northeast Africa near the border with the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan on a United Nations-sponsored visit to the refugee camps filled with tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees.

They have fled in terror from Darfur and the murderous janjaweed militias set loose on them by the central government in Khartoum over the last six years. It is widely estimated that at least 300,000 of them have died and at least as many have been driven from their homes.

Darfur has become a cause célèbre, literally. Besides Jolie, such Hollywood notables as George Clooney and his father Nick and Mia Farrow have visited the camps and returned to campaign for US and international intervention to stop the human devastation and carnage. (Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell rather belatedly called it “genocide.”) The testimony and agitation of such celebrities have accomplished little, as the killing and terror-driven flight have continued.

But before this current campaign of brutality began in western Sudan, there was another civil war in the southern region of the country, also pitting black-African residents against the onslaughts of the Arab-dominated government, with similar and by now scarcely surprising results.

Christopher Quinn’s frequently disturbing, sometimes compelling, and often inspiring documentary God Grew Tired of Us is about victims of that now ended strife. It focuses on three of the many thousands of “Lost Boys” who became separated from their families—many of whom were murdered—during the Muslim government’s horrific attacks on the black Christian and animist southerners. (God is also celebrity-generated; Ms. Jolie’s companion, Brad Pitt, and actors Catherine Keener and Dermot Mulroney were producers, and Nicole Kidman provides occasional narration.)

The Lost Boys, some barely more than infants, escaped from Sudan in the late 1980s and early 1990s and, after a terrible, circuitous trek of a thousand miles, wound up in a UN camp in northern Kenya, which contained 86,000 of them when the filmmakers began working there in 2001. Thousands of boys perished on the way to this over-taxed refuge.

The film begins with shots of someone tacking lists to an outdoor bulletin board, and scores of boys jamming the space around it, anxiously trying to read. The names on the board are of the latest youths to be accepted for emigration to the US. The filmmakers follow three of them on their dramatically, almost inconceivably new lives: Daniel, John and Panther, all of whom have been in the camp for about a decade.

Speaking of their thoughts, feelings, and memories to an unseen interviewer, they’re obviously intelligent, reflective, well-spoken, and hopeful, if also saddened by their imminent departure from relationships forged in almost unbearable hardship. They’re curious and ignorant of the America that awaits them. Daniel asks about bathroom showers, “How does it look like?”

John is sent to Syracuse, the other two to Pittsburgh. The film then becomes an intermittent chronicle and summary of their awkward, but patient and intrepid efforts to succeed here. The government program that admitted them essentially turned them loose to sink or swim after only three months of support. These youths survived virtually unimaginable peril and hardships in Africa, but each suffers frustration, perplexity and depressed loneliness in their new, rough urban lives. They endure dreary, arduous low-end employment, alienation and bigoted rejection. Each has trouble obtaining the education they longed for (and which was a goal of many of the 3,800 Lost Boys admitted to the country).

In effect, the movie depicts a personal journey from a society of obligation to one of sometimes isolating independence. Each of these young men ultimately triumphs modestly but impressively in this new world, but apparently without losing his original expansive humanity. It’s probably no coincidence that the scenes in Africa are much more spaciously composed, lambently lit, even brilliantly attractive, than the ones in America.

Quinn and company move rapidly and impressionistically, usually from one brief episode to another. The film concentrates on the reactions of its three subjects, which are often insightful, and sometimes sharply poignant. As a result, we’re left without a lot of pertinent information, including the extent of the assistance rendered by sponsors and social agencies. Articles, books, and at least one previous film over the last several years have indicated it was often inconsistent and inadequate. God doesn’t go there.

The history in Sudan over the last decade can easily inspire horror, and disgust at the actions and inaction of governments and much of humanity. The film’s story of these three men can almost simultaneously evoke a sharp sadness at their representative plights, and a deep admiration for their inspiring courage and altruism.