Bayflicks.net

A sad, harrowing, yet ultimately inspiring true story told with only moderate competence. Refugee All Stars focuses on six musicians, refugees from Sierra Leone’s horrifyingly brutal civil war, who came together in the Guinean refugee camps in which they’d lived for many years. In the course of the film, they tour the camps, visit their homeland to record their first record and consider moving back. But directors Zach Niles and Banker White don’t give us a real chance to fall in love with the music, nor do they stay on the individual musicians long enough for us to fall in love with them. The result feels like it’s skirting over the top and not quite opening itself up to show us how these six have turned tragedy and poverty into music.