The Citizen

An extraordinary journey across continents. A luminous story of imagination, love, family and the search for home.

Synopsis

When Yves Muya fled his home in Congo at the age of ten, he could never have imagined the journey ahead. Crossing borders, surviving a refugee camp, and eventually finding refuge in Nelson Mandela's South Africa, Yves escaped the uncertainty and violence around him by creating an elaborate imaginary world. At the heart of that world is a leopard, born from an extraordinary childhood encounter and transformed through his imagination into a companion on his journey. As the boundaries between memory and fantasy blur, imagination becomes his refuge in a world where little else feels safe.

Years later, that imagination helped carry him towards a new dream: America.

Today, Yves is a newly naturalized American citizen, building a life in Dallas, Texas, with his wife, Gretchen, and their two children. As he travels across his adopted homeland with his family, the landscapes of present-day America give way to extraordinary memories of his childhood, revealing a journey of survival, resilience, and the enduring search for belonging.

Blending intimate cinéma vérité, vivid animation, extraordinary archival material, and evocative music, THE CITIZEN brings Yves's past and present together in a sweeping cinematic portrait that moves between Africa and America, memory and imagination, hardship and hope.

Set against a deeply divided conversation about immigration, THE CITIZEN offers a profoundly human perspective on what it means to become American. At its heart, it is a love story: about the family we build, the places we call home, and the dreams that sustain us along the way.

A luminous story of the American Dream, and the universal longing to belong.

Support the Film

THE CITIZEN is an independent feature documentary currently in production, directed by Laura Piety and produced by Meadowland Pictures. We are bringing together a community of supporters who believe in the power of storytelling to connect people across cultures, borders, and experiences.

Your tax-deductible contribution through the International Documentary Association's fiscal sponsorship programme will help bring Yves's extraordinary journey to the screen, supporting the film's remaining production, animation, music, and post-production.

Join us in bringing THE CITIZEN to life.

Film Credits
Director: Laura Piety
Producer: Brandon Piety

Production Company: Meadowland Pictures
Format: Feature Documentary

Status: In Production
Fiscal Sponsor: International Documentary Association