Andrew Walton

'The Thing That Happened' is a twenty-two-minute documentary short that profiles the Hope North Secondary and Vocational school on northern Uganda. Hope North struggles on a shoe-string budget to provide a home and an education for children displaced by the civil war between the Lord's Resistance Army (L.R.A.) and the Uganda People's Defense Forces (U.D.P.F.) The students are a mix of former child soldiers, orphans and the abjectly poor. Mitigating the horrific effects of the war and focusing them on their future is a monumental task

Stanley, a young man from Washington State struggling to find direction in his life, visits his estranged father, who lives in Old Crow, a Yukon Territory town of 300 people 80 miles inside the Arctic Circle. While Stanley Jr. is used to hip-hop and fast food, Stanley Sr.'s life is steeped in the traditions of the Gwich'in people-hunting caribou, fishing and surviving in the rugged Arctic. At first, the two "Stans" couldn't have more different interests or approaches to life. But over time, their worlds come together.