IN JUBA, I‘D VISITED MY elder brother in the hospital and learned he could be cured were he in a more advanced institution like the one in Nairobi. I flew him there, where he received lifesaving treatment. I felt incredibly grateful that the weird worlds of fashion, acting, and clubbing had afforded me the means to do so. It was one of my first acts of putting my money where my mouth was. I’d gotten a taste of it and now I wanted to do more.

The fashion industry was instrumental in helping me raise an additional twenty-nine thousand dollars through Kickstarter right off the bat. CNN’s Inside Africa program did a feature on me, which compelled even more South Sudanese nationals to pay attention to whatever I was involved in, most notably my initiatives toward peace in Sudan. And I continued to raise money for my documentary.

Back in New York, out of the blue, I bumped into Brownica, a friend and fellow South Sudanese model living and working in the city. She had recommended me for an acting gig in an upcoming movie. I got home to find the script for The Good Lie already there and my girlfriend in the middle of reading it.

From the very first page, I felt that this was something I wanted to be part of. It had a kind of emotional and psychological pull on my entire being. The script spoke to me, from the storyline to the sentiment, and the characters came to me naturally. The entire movie was playing out right before my eyes, as if I had been involved in its conception. It was while reading the script that I remembered a conversation I’d had ten years ago with Bobby Newmyer, a producer of Training Day, about doing this exact kind of movie. Unfortunately, Bobby had passed away before we could act on it.

I started walking around the apartment, moving from one room to the other, as though possessed by some spirit. I went into the bathroom, locked myself up, looked in the mirror, and, deep in thought, faced my reflection. I then walked out and stood in the middle of the lounge area, seeing and feeling myself acting out a scene, revisiting a familiar moment of a life I’d once lived. If anyone had been watching me at that moment, they would probably have thought I’d completely lost my mind.

The script had triggered something in both my mind and my body, and I knew no other way of dealing with it. Luckily, I was now alone in the apartment, as my girlfriend had left to run errands, so I had the freedom to act crazy. The moment I came back to my senses, I opened my computer and saw a new email alert. Mindy Marin, the movie’s casting director, had written to me, introducing herself and telling me they had been looking for actors and, having received numerous recommendations on my behalf, were interested in speaking to me.

We talked on the phone, and she mentioned that the film starred Reese Witherspoon. I did not know who that was, which seemed to excite Mindy even more! I quickly auditioned for the three roles for Sudanese men, and my audition tapes were sent to Philippe Falardeau, the movie’s director.

After a couple of days of anxious waiting, I received an email asking me to contact Philippe immediately. I took a break at my job at an Equinox gym and made a Skype call. Philippe and I instantly hit it off, the way Mindy and I had.

He told me that in 1994, while I left Akobo on my journey for America, he was getting caught in the crossfire between the two SPLA rival camps in Torit and Nasir while on a visit.

I was taken aback by his extensive knowledge of the area, including his understanding of the inner workings of the SPLA. He even knew the names of some SPLA generals who were lesser known beyond the borders of Sudan. Philippe wouldn’t stop talking about Akobo, where he had been working on documentary projects.

I was soon on a plane to Los Angeles to audition solo, then it was back to New York to await further communication. Once Reese Witherspoon was available to audition, they flew me back out. Philippe pulled me aside and said that even if it wasn’t an actual part, there would still be something for me in this movie about my country.

But I knew Philippe wanted me to put my all into the audition—I could hear it in his voice. I was introduced to Reese, who was kind and courteous and made me feel as though we were long-lost friends. The rest of the crew also treated me like I was already part of the team and auditions were just a formality. There was a sense I got that the crew felt like I could be even more useful to them than just as a cast member. They kept asking questions whenever I told them about my journey, from being a child soldier to walking the New York fashion runways.

In a few days, I got the call: they had selected me to play Jeremiah. I was at a loss for words. This was a big part—bigger than the ones I had auditioned for! Because I wasn’t reacting to the news in any way, Philippe explained that Jeremiah was meant to be someone persuasive, someone who convinces people that there’s a God. Philippe said he might not believe in God, but that when he saw me being persuasive, he thought he could be convinced. That’s why he’d picked me.

Still unable to catch my breath, I just thanked Philippe and Mindy for the exhilarating news. Within a week, I flew to Atlanta and got down to work on the film. My friend Emmanuel Jal was also cast in the movie, as were two more South Sudanese actors, Arnold Oceng and Kuoth Wiel. We shot in Atlanta before proceeding to Cape Town, South Africa, where we filmed many of the Africa-based scenes. We also shot scenes in Nairobi and in the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya, giving the cast and crew a feel for what life was like for refugees.

I took every opportunity to recount my experiences growing up. Because of this, the cast and crew took the film more seriously, and the director and producers brought me and Emmanuel on board as consultants to ensure the story was told accurately.

Throughout filming, I beamed and sometimes cried whenever I recalled wrestling with my brothers Duany, Chuol, and Oder and my cousin Wunbil in the black, incredibly fertile earth on the banks of the Nile, the same black color of our skin. I, the boy who never truly had a home, had now become a man at home all over the world. Wherever I went, I carried my blackness, the color of my homeland—a constant reminder that peace and rebirth were possible. I had built myself a remarkable life, starting with nothing but hope.

Being part of this incredible film and having the producers respect my expertise on South Sudan—its politics and its people—was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Once again, I felt deeply connected to my past and community. I had gone from being a small boy caught in a web of unspeakable violence to a respected voice on the struggles in my homeland. Once a child soldier wielding an AK-47, I now saw myself as an ambassador of peace, armed with a hopeful story of triumph, which I was eager to tell anyone willing to hear and learn from it.

With the establishment of the new government of the Republic of South Sudan under way, many of my contemporaries from the Sudanese diaspora were moving back home. Those outside government set up shop in the private sector, including business, academia, and the media. There had been a running joke that South Sudan was a country without a state. Now the work of state building had fallen upon us, and everyone was rolling up their sleeves.

But despite all this good energy, there arose murmurs about corruption and excess. The joke that started making the rounds was that other African countries had corruption, but South Sudan had pure looting. A new, flashy South Sudanese elite was forming, known for their selective largesse and over-the-top lifestyles. The general feeling among civilians and government officials was that it was taking longer for ordinary people to reap the rewards of independence. The perpetual promise was that once systems were established and functioning, the people in the villages, like Akobo, would get a taste of our newfound milk and honey. But oil money was leaking.

I was in Juba in March 2012, when what appeared to be the new republic’s first political and economic crisis came knocking. Sudan and South Sudan engaged in territorial clashes over oil, which led South Sudan to shut down oil production, heavily curtailing its revenue and resulting in loss of life and property. Peace prevailed months later, and it was back to business as usual, though some serious damage had been done.

More cracks started emerging within the SPLA, pitting South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, against his vice president, Dr. Riek Machar. There had been serious teething problems in transforming the SPLA from a liberation movement into a properly functioning political party, and there was a growing sense that the president, being its de facto leader and commander in chief, was trying to lock out any competition for party leadership. Soon the power struggle within the SPLA took an ethnic turn, with the Dinka president retreating to his ethnic base to drum up military support in preparation for what seemed like an inevitable confrontation with the Nuer vice president. And there were also other figures jockeying for the SPLA’s top leadership and the country’s presidency, including the much-respected “Mama” Rebecca Nyandeng, Dr. John Garang’s widow.

I was leaving Nairobi for New York on July 23, 2013, when I received news that President Kiir had dismissed Dr. Machar from office. I immediately sensed trouble brewing, knowing how ethnically dicey my country’s politics were. In December 2013, President Kiir accused Dr. Machar and ten other leading SPLA figures of plotting a military coup to oust him. Dr. Machar denied involvement and fled Juba, only to reemerge, leading an armed splinter group within the SPLA called the SPLA in Opposition.

This set the stage for the start of a new civil war, largely viewed through the prism of a renewed Dinka-Nuer rivalry, one ethnic group dominating the government forces and the other dominating the opposition forces. Long-winded international mediation led to the signing of a peace accord in August 2015, which saw Dr. Machar’s return to the vice presidency in a power-sharing agreement. But the peace didn’t hold for long. Dr. Machar’s home in Juba, among others, was flattened by government forces, resulting in hundreds of deaths in what seemed like targeted killings of the Nuer. A new phase of the war broke out, with Dr. Machar and other leading SPLA figures fleeing into exile. A tenuous peace agreement was later signed, and Dr. Machar was sworn in as first vice president of the unity government, officially ending the civil war. But sporadic fighting and occasional atrocities continue today.

To me, it was like the ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. We were back to square one: war and suffering.

Shortly after I finished shooting The Good Lie, I received a phone call from my old friend Jangjuol, whom Paul had sent back to Akobo. Trying to retrace his steps back to Ethiopia and find a way to America, Jangjuol had found a group with which he could travel to Walda, where he would survive a season’s cattle rustling and the abduction of several children. He had then received sponsorship to immigrate to the United States, just like the rest of us had. He now lived in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife and five children.

I hopped on a plane and met his warm and bubbly family. Afterward, Jangjuol and I had a moment to ourselves. We sat outside an Ethiopian restaurant, just like we did back in the day, while eating injera with shiro and thiem, cubes of seasoned meat. I told him I had recently spoken to Garang Barjok, the only one of our boyhood friends I hadn’t heard from in a long time. He had seen me on television doing an interview, and though he was now a colonel in the SPLA, he burst into tears seeing how much trouble I’d gone through in order to speak about what we all went through.

Jangjuol and I laughed about how difficult adjusting to American life could be, how far we had come, and how it was all worth it. Then, suddenly, Jangjuol stopped midlaugh.

JANGJUOL: Believe me, brother. I paid for this with my soul.

I related to what he was saying. Being a refugee forces you to remake yourself a thousand times in a thousand different ways, despite your trying to hold on to some piece of yourself that you think makes you you. That night, as I sat there with Jangjuol, my heart was filled with warmth and gratitude. Despite everything, we had both managed to carve out our own place in a world that so often made out like it didn’t want us. We’d survived, become our own men, and found our way back to each other—and ourselves—walking toward the rising sun.