Angelina Jolie’s passionate youth in “Beyond Borders is a 2003”: but what she did in reality was the same as in the movie

While attending a fund-raising gala, Sarah Jordan, a naive, married American socialite living in England, witnesses a fiery plea delivered by an intruder – a renegade humanitarian, Dr. Nick Callahan. His plea made on behalf of impoverished children under his care turns Sarah’s life upside down. Attracted to Nick and his cause, she impulsively abandons her job at an art gallery and sheltered life in England to do what she can to aid his efforts at the refugee camps. She travels to Ethiopia bringing with her a caravan of essential medical supplies to the impossibly remote camp, where she finds Nick and his closest colleague, Dr. Elliott Hauser.

As Sarah’s work based in England takes her to other volatile areas, where few people have traveled and even fewer have survived, she discovers that the harsh realities she encounters, and her persistent romantic attraction to the charismatic, unpredictable doctor, ignite in her a burning passion for saving lives, while risking her own in the process. She works for humanitarian and human rights organizations for ten years after she first travels to Ethiopia. At Dr Hauser’s urging, she helps with another key shipment blocked by warring factions and corruption, and again finds Nick, now in the border region of Cambodia and Vietnam. Here she discovers the same nexus of war and refugee suffering but even more tightly bound than in Ethiopia. Khmer Rouge forces terrorize the camp, and Dr. Hauser is killed in a successful effort to free the camp from their grip. Upon her return to London, she gives birth to Nick’s daughter, and eventually is appointed the regional representative for the United Kingdom for the U.N.H.C.R.

At the same time, Nick now finds himself inevitably caught up on the humanitarian crisis in Chechnya, and goes missing. Sarah realizes she must find him a third time and tell him he is a father, and that she can never forget him. As they desperately escape his captors, she defiantly refuses to abandon him and dies in a landmine which Nick survives. The film ends with Nick arriving at Sarah and Henry’s home in England to first meet his young daughter.