A boy carries bundles in a refugee camp in Ethiopia in a scene from the documentary Home Across Lands.

John Lavall

John Lavall’s awkwardly titled Home Across Lands, showing Wednesday as part of the Rhode Island International Film Festival, is an inspirational, feel-good documentary about the plight of African war refugees and their eventual resettlement in Providence through the auspices of the International Institute of Rhode Island.

This well-documented film follows members of several families — some of them already relocated to Rhode Island; some who hope to get on the next plane to T.F. Green — and the officials and case workers at the International Institute who make the dreams of some of them come true.

“Life is just on hold,” says one man in the Shimelba Refugee Camp in Ethiopia where he and 4,000 other ethnic Kunama tribe members have lived since 2000 after fleeing their native Eritrea during a war between the two countries. At Shimelba the refugees, who were farmers and cattle herders, now find themselves without land to raise crops and in a constant struggle with the nearby local herders over grazing land. Food, water and clothing are scarce. Frey Kassahun, a caseworker at the International Institute, describes life in the camp as “a daily struggle to survive.”

The Kunama are described as a group of proud, close-knit families who help each other. That soon becomes apparent both in the way they work together to build sod houses in the refugee camp and in the determined efforts of their relatives in the United States to bring them here to build a new and better life.

We also see the dedication of the staff of the International Institute as they try to help the immigrants fit into their new country. Even finding the right bus to get them around town is a challenge that prompts an on-the-spot lesson.

The film follows student volunteers from Brown University who tutor them, as well as programs to help them find jobs, teach them the economic realities of life in the United States (where things are not as easy as they may have been led to believe), find them apartments and help improve their English. (Most of the film is in English, but even so, much of the dialogue spoken by the Kunama is subtitled for clearer understanding.)

Lavall has done an impressive job on both sides of the Atlantic in bringing to light both the refugee stories and the work of the International Institute, which is our own backyard but does much of its work with little local regcognition recognition.

Home Across Lands will be screened at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Columbus Theater, 270 Broadway, Providence, as part of the Rhode Island International Film Festival. Tickets are $10 at the door.

mjanuson@projo.com