Orphanage Documentary

[Annemie]

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This stunning documentary captures personal stories of past State School wards, family members, and staff. It is on sale in the Cottage 11 Gift Shop and the Steele County History Center Gift Shop for $18.63 + tax.

This is a documentary that follows the heartbreaking stories of children in Ukraine. For too many, these children have been abandoned and rejected by society due to their economic status, health condition, or simply being orphaned. This film captures the reality of what it means to be an unwanted child in Ukraine and shows how dedicated citizens are working hard to provide better opportunities for them.

The horrifying yet inspiring story of an orphan in India, is a powerful reminder of the resiliency and strength that lies within us. This documentary chronicles her harrowing journey as she struggles to survive without parents or guardians. It follows her from a young age, where she was left on the streets with no one to turn to for help, through the tumultuous times she faced in an orphanage. The film brings to light the often overlooked struggles that orphans have to face as they navigate a world without parental support.

This is a captivating documentary that takes audiences on an incredible journey into the lives of orphaned elephants. It focuses on the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and its breeding and rehabilitation station, located in two unique parts of Kenya. The film follows a year-long narrative of these orphaned elephants as they grow up, forge relationships with their peers, and eventually make their way back into the wild. Audiences are treated to never-before-seen footage of these animals in their natural habitats, showing us a side of coexistence that is rarely seen. Through this film we gain an understanding of both the incredible strength of wildlife conservation efforts as well as the remarkable emotional connections that the elephants possess.

In some ways I appreciate the ambiguity of this image. It made me stop and think. What details in this photo were staged? What details are accurate? And where is the line for photographers between documentary photography, commercial work and works of fiction?

Where do combat photographers fall in this range of commercial versus documentary? Are their editors the commercial component, choosing which images should be pitched to Time Magazine or the Washington Post? Does the combat photographer, by choosing a particular conflict/refugee camp/Marine Corps platoon/prison to cover injecting himself/herself into the story by virtue of choosing the locale/personnel? Or is there anything as a pure artist in a combat photographer?

The film takes us to 2019 in an orphanage-type institution in Lysychansk, a town in the eastern Luhansk oblast of Ukraine. The town is about 20 kms from the frontline between Ukrainian territory and the so-called Luhansk People's Republic that was formed in 2014 when Russian forces occupied part of eastern Ukraine.

Many families in the region have been broken apart since then. Some were separated because parents lost their jobs and others because they found an outlet in alcohol or drugs or became homeless. Kids from such families are taken to shelters, centers for social and psychological rehabilitation, until their destiny could be decided by the authorities. After 9 months, most are either returned to their parents or brought to a foster family.

\"I think childhood can be the most traumatic period that can affect our whole life,\" Simon Lereng Wilmont, the Danish director behind \"The House Made of Splinters,\" told ABC News. \"Mine was like that so I became interested in filming children. Our previous films were about kids in a safe environment so later I just wondered how it's like to grow up in a dangerous one.\"

In the very first days of filming, the crew found themselves in danger -- on the way to the orphanage their car came under shelling. Fortunately no one was hurt and it didn't make the director change his mind and leave Ukraine. On the contrary.

In that uncertain-but-safe bubble, the children in the film live through their tragedies, grow and change and sometimes demonstrate outstanding human qualities -- this is what Wilmont's team witnessed during roughly 100 days of filming over the course of a year and a half.

Watching the film, it's at times hard to believe that it's not fictional -- the stories unfold naturally, no one is looking into the camera as it silently follows the often-heroic children. It took the team quite some time to reach that goal, they said.

\"We spent half a year earning these kids' trust. Because they looked into the camera and then we had to resort to some tricks to make them not do that,\" Safarov said. \"And also because the kids thought we wanted to adopt them and tried to show the best of them. And no kid is better at acting like those from dysfunctional families. Because acting for them is a way of surviving.\"

In one scene, a girl who's anxiously waiting for her mom to pick up hears \"The number you have dialed cannot be reached.\" Here grandmother tells her that her mom is drinking again. She promised her daughter to come and see her but didn't keep her promise. Again.

\"In some situations we just had to stop the filming and pause because we couldn't help crying,\" Wilmont said. \"I couldn't believe the parents could be so indifferent to their kids. And those little ones, despite everything, still love their parents! Every day they were losing hope and regaining it again.\"

\"The psychologists that came there usually aren't very helpful, their salaries are so poor,\" Safarov said. \"So it turns out that the teachers become mental doctors for kids but have no one to talk to themselves and you can see that burden on their shoulders. When we finally convinced them to talk to the shrinks we hired for them they were astonished at how much pain and tears they have been holding inside.\"

The film appeared on screens in January 2022 and immediately caught the eye of critics and received Sundance Film Festival's award for best directing in the World Cinema Documentary category. Russia began a full-scale Invasion of Ukraine began the following month. The orphanage was relocated to a safer place.

\"All the children's hardships that we showed in our film now multiplied so much because of this war,\" Wilmont said. \"That's why I'm so happy we were nominated for the Oscar now since we can bring up again the suffering that the Russian invasion caused to Ukrainian children in particular.\"

The full-fledged war gave a start to a bigger mission for Safarov, its producer and co-director. Working on the film he and his friend Olena Rozvadovska launched a foundation Voices of Children that provides humanitarian and psychological aid to the Ukrainian kids affected by the war.

\"I've been working near the frontline since 2014 and 'The House Made of Splinters' is my third film. But it's the most difficult one from an emotional point of view,\" he said. \"So the launch of the foundation was, on one hand, a way of relief for me since now I can help the kids. On the other hand, we saw how much children can be neglected, so now we want them to be heard and understood. The name of our fund, Voices of Children, says it.\"

Dozens of such quotes were compiled into a book the fund has released this year. Safarov and Rozvadovska toured in Europe with the edition to raise more funds for their charity. Their big dream now is to build a big rehabilitation center for children in the Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine.

Therefore, we took out personal bank loans. Then we asked our camera crew friends to work for deferred payment, which meant that they would not be paid if we didn't sell the documentary. Flights, accommodations, editing, file footage, music rights, etc., were all paid by our bank loans.

Throughout the making of My Khmer Heart, we juggled freelance TV work in between shooting and editing the documentary. By the end of the project, I had produced and directed a two-hour Olympic preview special, a sports documentary and several commercials. To put this madness into some perspective, I was working so hard I didn't have time to write a detailed script for My Khmer Heart, so the editor and I made it up as we cut!

We jumped on to the film festival bandwagon. The Hollywood Film Festival was small enough for us to shine. We shared first place for Best Documentary and received a great review from The Hollywood Reporter. While it would be exaggerating to say the phone rang hot after this review, we received a couple of offers from distributors.

During the making of My Khmer Heart, we balanced on the knife-edge of the unpredictable. We could never have predicted that our project would be taken to HBO by its LA rep and sold within a week of HBO's Julie Anderson and Sheila Nevins viewing the project. We could never have predicted that the feature film rights to Geraldine's story would be sold to Hollywood. And I was absolutely convinced we would sell the documentary in Australia. My prediction was wrong: We still haven't sold it in our home territory.

With My Khmer Heart, I feel like we conquered a mountain. We're bruised, battered and frost-bitten, but we got to unfurl the independent spirit flag. We found a home for My Khmer Heart with a broadcaster that promotes and nurtures independent projects, and we also found an American distributor who will release the film theatrically, make it available for benefits and get it out to the educational and home video markets. So, knowing what I know now, would I self-fund again? The head says no. The heart says yes.

Janine Hosking is an Australian filmmaker who has worked as a reporter/producer/ director on many well-known Australian television programs. She has also written a nonfiction book and has directed two self-funded documentaries. She won Australia's prestigious Walkley Award for journalism in 1998 for her television documentary about a young burn victim.

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