2002-01-01
0
During the pandemic, living under an extreme right-wing government, filmmakers Bel Bechara and Sandro Serpa receive the news that would change their lives: there was a baby to be adopted.
My Flesh and Blood is a 2003 documentary film by Jonathan Karsh chronicling a year in the life of the Tom family. The Tom family is notable as the mother, Susan, adopted eleven children, most of whom had serious disabilities or diseases. The film itself is notable for handling the sensitive subject matter in an unsentimental way that is more uplifting than one might expect.
At age 31, after experiencing her second miscarriage, Tahyna MacManus was devastated, lost, angry and, despite those around her, felt terribly alone. She picked up a camera and started to record her story and in doing so found her tribe. Resilient, courageous women speaking of their sadness, their shame and their guilt while still holding onto hope. Tahyna discovers that 1 in 4 Australian women experience miscarriage so why aren’t we talking about it? In this highly intimate journey, Tahyna is on a mission to lift the lid on all that shame, provide some answers and make sure that women no longer walk this path alone. But first, she has to face her own fears.
After the collapse of the Communist regime in 1989, over 100,000 children were discovered living in Romanian orphanages. Follow Nori Vito, one of those orphans, as she journeys from her adopted American home to Romania and Greece to find the family she lost almost 30 years ago.
In this powerful tale about the rise of Korea’s global adoption program, four adult adoptees return to their country of birth and reconnect with their roots, mapping the geographies of kinship that bind them to a homeland they never knew.
Uplifting tale of Staten Island woman who creates modern underground railroad and rescues 2,000 dogs condemned to death in Amish Country puppy mills. The film chronicles Laura F on her weekend rescue missions to Amish Country. With her Brooklyn mom and Staten Island girl friends by her side, Laura embarks on a four-year odyssey to rescue dogs from the hellish conditions of Amish puppy mills. The film follows four of the dogs from the time their lives are spared until they are nursed back to health and placed with their forever families. We see the dogs leave the cages where they have spent their entire lives and watch these dogs, who were given up for dead, transform the lives of the people who adopt them.
What does blood have to do with identity? Kendra Mylnechuk, an adult Native adoptee, born in 1980 at the cusp of the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act, is on a journey to reconnect with her birth family and discover her Lummi heritage.
Kati Pohler was abandoned in a market in China when she was three days old. Her parents left a note saying they would meet her on a famous bridge 10 or 20 years later. When the time arrived, it became a huge story in China, but Kati was living in America and had no idea. This is how she finally met her biological family.
From 2000 to 2008, China was the leading country for U.S. international adoptions. There are now approximately 70,000 Chinese adoptees being raised in the United States. Ninety-five percent of them are girls. Each year, these girls face new questions regarding their adopted lives and surroundings. This is a film about Chinese adopted girls, their American adoptive families and the paradoxical losses and gains inherent in international adoption. The characters and events in this story will challenge our traditional notions of family, culture and race.
An intimate portrait of a real Modern Family: Meet Erik and Sandro, a gay couple with daughters birthed by their friend Rachel who's married with three teenagers of her own.
Denese Joy Becker, a manicurist living in Iowa, discovers she is indeed Dominga Sic Ruiz, a survivor from a 1982 Guatemalan massacre, when more than 200 people were killed in the small village of Rio Negro, after opposing the construction of a dam, sponsored by World Bank. She then tries to unveil the truth.
Traces the new Cold War between Russia and the West from the ban on American citizens adopting Russian children to the Kremlin’s anti-LGBTQ campaign, which positions the international marriage equality movement as a national threat.
At age 25, Olivier Rousteing was named the creative director of the French luxury fashion house, Balmain. At the time, Rousteing was a relatively unknown designer, but in the decade since, he’s proven his business prowess and artistic instinct by leading Balmain to new heights. Wonderboy gives the viewer the rare opportunity to experience the inner sanctum of the fashion world, as we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with this extraordinary individual while he works.
What does it mean to adopted and brought up far away from your country of birth? In “Given Away,” this week’s moving new Op-Doc by directors Glenn and Julie Morey, Korean adoptees who grew up in Western countries reflect on the complicated emotional terrain that they’ve navigated in their lives. Glenn Morey was himself adopted from Korea in the wake of the Korean war, and the directors have channeled that connection to create a beautifully nuanced and emotional film. As the Moreys write of Glenn’s experience interviewing adoptees, “He has needed others like him … to help him make sense of his life. They have also helped him make peace with the universe.”
Through one woman's experience as an adopted person and also as a mother who relinquished her child in 1971, this documentary highlights the many complex issues associated with adoption.