As a former missionary kid who has had the opportunity to watch Ben Between Africa a few times, I’m writing this with the hope that the film can serve as a conduit, or perhaps a catalyst, for other missionary kids to pause and reflect on their own experiences of “life between.” 

In this intimate and thoughtfully crafted work, filmmaker Ari Ali weaves together family archives, personal investigation, and present-day interviews to explore what it means to live between cultures, and to search for a sense of home that may no longer exist in any tangible form. The result is both expansive and deeply personal, a film that moves gently through memory, grief, and inherited longing.

​

The film’s quiet narrative arc is carried by cinematography that imbues each frame with a sense of consequential weight, alongside a carefully attuned musical score that deepens its reflective atmosphere. Together, these elements create a film that lingers long beyond the final frame.

At its core, Ben Between Africa captures a relatable tension, the longing to return “home,” only to realize that home was a certain place at a particular time - only accessible now in memory and shared reminiscences. While the film resonates broadly with anyone navigating questions of identity and belonging, so many aspects resonated personally, various thoughts and emotions voiced in the film could have been mine, for example, the frustration of looking and sounding American but feeling so foreign and out of place, the various coping mechanisms of trying to adapt to life in America, the retrospective look back on missions and questioning the approaches taken... MKs have a unique perspective on their parents' work.

​

Importantly, Ben Between Africa approaches faith with a rare balance of openness and restraint. Rather than imposing critique, it presents belief systems as lived realities, allowing viewers to engage with the material on their own terms. This respect lends the film a sense of integrity and invites a wide spectrum of audiences into its emotional landscape.

​

Over and over again, this film brought to mind so many older MKs I know, the generation ahead of me. Just about all of them were sent off to boarding school, most at a very young age because that was just what everyone did on the mission field; there really weren't any other options. By the time my own parents were serving as missionaries in the 1980s, home schooling was an option. At age 14 however, I was on a waiting list to go away to Rift Valley Academy in Kenya (almost 2000 miles from our home in Maputo), but that plan fell through and I was (gratefully!) able to attend a brand-new school for missionary kids the following year that was only a short drive from our home. I often wonder how differently my life and experiences would have been had I gone away to Kenya; I confess that I've always been so grateful that I did not.

At its heart, the film functions as an act of remembrance and release. The search for Ben and the excavation of family letters and memories, becomes a vehicle for confronting grief that has long remained unspoken. In this way, the documentary transcends its investigative premise, becoming a space for catharsis not only for those on screen, but for the broader community it reflects.

Ultimately, Ben Between Africa is a poignant meditation on memory, identity, and the enduring search for belonging. It offers no easy answers, but instead creates a space where complexity, contradiction, and emotional truth can coexist, inviting viewers to reflect on their own definitions of home, and the histories that shape them.

​

My hope is that this film will encourage others to share their own experiences of ‘life in between’ and as they do so, find a measure of healing and peace.  
 

Beth Restrick
Head, African Studies Library
Boston University