D'une mère à l'autre(2015)

Wonder Boy(fr)

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.

Foster Child(en)

Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his becoming a foster child. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. Considered a milestone in documentary cinema, it addressed the country’s internal colonialism in a profoundly personal manner, winning a Special Jury Prize at Banff and multiple international awards.

Tribu(es)

Ruben and Gio have been recently adopted by Evelyn and Memo. The four of them try to create a home where the past, the bad and good stories, and the dreams in common for the future blend all together.

The Hunt for the Oldest DNA(en)

Three million years ago, camels roamed through Greenland’s endless forests and our ancestors lived in the trees. It all came to an end with the Ice Ages. What died and what survived, as natural selection shaped the evolutionary tree during this epochal shift from hot to cold? Until now, scientists have known less about the natural world before the Ice Age than they did about the age of dinosaurs, which ended 64 million years ago. A new discovery is set to reveal this lost world, species by species. Led by Danish gene-hunter Eske Willerslev, a team of scientists for the first time in history is sequencing DNA from before the Ice Age. The picture that emerges is of a hot planet, when forests blanketed the Arctic and carbon levels matched those in our atmosphere today. Is this a portrait of our own climate future?

Wo Ai Ni Mommy(zh)

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.

Twinsters(en)

Adopted from South Korea, raised on different continents & connected through social media, Samantha & Anaïs believe that they are twin sisters separated at birth.

Three Identical Strangers(en)

New York, 1980. Three complete strangers accidentally discover that they're identical triplets, separated at birth. The 19-year-olds' joyous reunion catapults them to international fame, but also unlocks an extraordinary and disturbing secret that goes beyond their own lives – and could transform our understanding of human nature forever.

Somewhere Between(en)

Questions of race, identity and heritage are explored through the lives of young American women growing up as adoptees from China. These four distinct individuals reflect on their experiences as members of transracial families.

Life Happens(en)

Life Happens deals with the topic of abortion in a unique, personal and ultimately uplifting way. Director Ash Greyson, who was nearly aborted just months before the Roe vs Wade decision, sets out on a journey to find others like him. In the process he uncovers the divisive issues, eventually finds some common ground, and seals it all up with compelling first person stories from mothers and children who narrowly escaped abortion. While pulling no punches, he skillfully replaces rhetoric and religion with hope and heart in what may be the most approachable film ever created on the topic.

MUM Misunderstandings of Miscarriage(en)

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.

Dawnland(en)

They were forced to assimilate into white society: children ripped away from their families, depriving them of their culture and erasing their identities. Can reconciliation help heal the scars from childhoods lost? "Dawnland" is the untold story of Indigenous child removal in the US through the nation's first-ever government-endorsed truth and reconciliation commission, which investigated the devastating impact of Maine’s child welfare practices on the Wabanaki people.

El Universo de la Pequeña S(es)

A Quiet Girl(en)

Adopted Montreal filmmaker Adrian Wills discovers, on camera and in real time, the startling truths of his complex beginnings in Newfoundland. Shocking details drive Wills to the core of his birth mother’s resilience, and ultimately his own. In this moving feature documentary that combines 16mm footage and contemporary images with deeply personal conversations, Wills’ voyage transforms from an urgent search for identity into a quest to give a quiet girl her voice.

Geographies of Kinship(en)

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.

Adoption International: A Global Scandal(fr)

In the collective imagination, international adoption evokes images of children being saved from a life of destitution in poorer countries by being adopted by families in Europe or America. But the reality that has emerged is one of child trafficking, falsified documents and governments around the world turning a blind eye.

South Korea’s Adoption Reckoning(en)

FRONTLINE and The Associated Press examine allegations of fraud and abuse in South Korea’s historic foreign adoption boom. The documentary investigates cases of falsified records and identities among the adoptions of 200,000 children to the U.S. and other countries over decades.

The Twinning Reaction(en)

An astounding exposé that gives voice to the unwitting subjects of an infamous American scientific experiment: the 1960s Neubauer-Bernard study of separated twins. Told from the perspective of the Jewish identical twins and triplets who were secretly split up in infancy and adopted through Louise Wise Services, a Jewish adoption agency, the documentary examines the traumatic, long-term effects of the separations — and continuing deception — on the children and their adoptive families.

Marilyn, Her Final Secret(fr)

Thanks to DNA, this documentary establishes the identity of Marilyn's biological father, thus revealing her new paternal family, 60 years after the icon's death.

Lenin kam nur bis Lüdenscheid - Meine kleine deutsche Revolution(de)

The free, almost naive view from the perspective of a child puts the "68ers" in a new, illuminating light in the anniversary year 2008. The film is a provocative reckoning with the ideological upbringing that seemed so progressive and yet was suffocated by the children's desire to finally grow up. With an ironic eye and a feuilletonistic style, author Richard David Precht and Cologne documentary film director André Schäfer trace a childhood in the West German provinces - and place the major events of those years in completely different, smaller and very private contexts.

First Person Plural(en)

In 1966, Deann Borshay Liem was adopted by an American family and sent from Korea to her new home in California. There, the memory of her birth family was nearly obliterated, until recurring dreams led her to investigate her own past, and she discovered that her Korean mother was very much alive. Bravely uniting her biological and adoptive families, Borshay Liem embarks on a heartfelt journey in this acclaimed film that first premiered on POV in 2000. First Person Plural is a poignant essay on family, loss and the reconciling of two identities.