Across Three Wildernesses (2013)

Across Three Wildernesses is the journey of two poets, an American and a Cambodian, who met at the University of Iowa during the turbulent 1960s. Returning to his native country, U Sam Oeur underwent the ordeal of American bombs, civil war, and the torture and savagery of the Khmer Rouge. Despite censorship, Ken McCullough sought desperately to maintain his connection with Sam, but the two friends were not reunited for another quarter century. This visually lush documentary, filmed in Cambodia and the U.S., chronicles, through their poetry and interviews, the emotional course of their intertwined lives. Ultimately, their story is one of hope and survival, coming down firmly on the side of 'peace, freedom and democracy,' a struggle still very much in the news.