“Something to Smile About”: a BVC documentary
This is the opinion of Logan Lindvedt, Program Manager of the BVC
On Sunday, May 3, St. John’s will host the first official United States premiere of “Something to Smile About,” a documentary film created by St. John’s alumni Peyton Reece ’23 and Sam Rengo ’23. The screening will begin at 6 p.m. in Stephen B. Humphrey Theater, with a social hour featuring East African food to follow.
The film follows the lives of five people living in Mathare, Kenya, one of Nairobi’s largest informal settlements and a place often described only through the language of poverty, hardship and crime. But Reece and Rengo’s film looks deeper. While it does not ignore the real difficulty of life in Mathare, it refuses to let struggle be the only story. Instead, “Something to Smile About” offers a close and human portrait of resilience, friendship, humor and hope.
The idea for the film began in January 2024, when Reece traveled to Kenya with the Benedictine Volunteer Corps as part of the annual Nairobi Experience. During that trip, he spent a day walking through Mathare with other members of the BVC. The experience unsettled him. He saw the visible challenges of life in the slum, but he also noticed something that stayed with him long after he left: joy. He wondered how people living amid such difficult circumstances could still seem so full of life. That question became the seed of the documentary.
One year later, Reece returned to Kenya with Rengo to explore that question through film. Over six weeks, they followed the daily lives of four teenage boys and one adult social worker in Mathare. The result is not a film about outsiders arriving with easy answers. It is a film about paying attention. It asks viewers to see Mathare not as a distant place defined by need, but as a community filled with people whose lives are layered, complicated, painful and beautiful. After filming, Reece and Rengo spent months organizing, translating and editing hours of footage. They reunited in Collegeville in August 2025 to begin the long editing process, which continued into the new year. In February 2026, they returned to Kenya to share the completed film with the people who made it possible and to record short updates on their stories.
Since then, “Something to Smile About” has premiered at Alliance Française in downtown Nairobi and has been shown at several grassroots community screenings in and around Mathare. Before returning fully home, Reece and Rengo also brought the film to Bretzfeld, Germany. Now, the story comes back to St. John’s, where their journey as graduates, volunteers and filmmakers first took shape.
For the CSB+SJU community, this screening is more than a chance to watch a documentary. It is an invitation to encounter a story carried home by two alumni who allowed their time in East Africa to ask something more of them. Their film challenges the easy assumptions people often make about places like Mathare. It reminds viewers that dignity is not erased by poverty, that joy can survive in narrow places and that hope is often found where people least expect it.
As Reece and Rengo write in their invitation, these stories “challenge the notion that nothing good can come from a place like Mathare” and remind viewers that even in life’s most difficult struggles, “we can always find something to smile about.” The CSB+SJU community is invited to attend the screening of “Something to Smile About” on Sunday, May 3, at 6 p.m. in Stephen B. Humphrey Theater. A social hour with East African food will follow the film.