Where's Foster?(2021)

The Silence(en)

There are children. There are those who abuse them. And there are those who know, but never tell.

Broken Places(en)

An exploration into why some children are severely damaged by early adversity while others are able to thrive. By revisiting childhood trauma victims profiled decades ago, we learn how their experiences shaped their lives as adults.

In Jesus’ Name: Shattering the Silence of St. Anne's Residential School(en)

A poignant all-Indigenous English and Cree-English collaborative documentary that breaks long-held silences imposed upon indigenous children who were interned at the notoriously violent St. Anne’s Residential School in Fort Albany First Nation, Ontario. Use of a homemade electric chair at St. Anne's and the incorporation of testimony about student-on-student abuse makes this documentary stand apart from other films about Canadian residential school experiences. This film will serve as an Indigenous historical document wholly authored by Indigenous bodies and voices, those of the Survivors themselves.

The State of Texas vs. Melissa(en)

Melissa Lucio was the first Hispanic woman sentenced to death in Texas. For ten years she has been awaiting her fate, and now faces her last appeal.

Hexenkinder(de)

The movie recalls children who suffered mental and physical harm both during the last century, particularly in religious orphanages, and during the time of early modernperiod witch-hunts. It shows that the mindsets and behavioural patterns of both time periods are more alike than one might think.

Minding the Gap(en)

Three young men bond together to escape volatile families in their Rust Belt hometown. As they face adult responsibilities, unexpected revelations threaten their decade-long friendship.

An Open Secret(en)

An investigation into accusations of teenagers being sexually abused within the film industry.

Champagne(en)

The true story of a young teenage girl whose mother is incarcerated for murder. Living in a Catholic Children's home run by an order of nuns, she provides poignant commentary about her mother, her own situation and her outlook for the future.

Hotel Laide(pt)

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.

Showbiz Kids(en)

A documentary chronicling the shared experiences of prominent former child stars and the personal and professional price of fame and failure on a child.

Passengers(cs)

The heroes of the film came together in a theater troupe—Passengers—and together they prepared a play about how they imagine their lives after leaving the children's home where they grew up. However, reality is much more dramatic than theater.

Thomas Hirschhorn – Gramsci Monument(en)

Thomas Hirschhorn, one of the few Swiss artists of world renown, often touches on social wounds with his provocative works. In 2013, Hirschhorn built a monument for Italian philosopher and communist Antonio Gramsci in a public housing project in the Bronx. The contentious artist collaborated with neighborhood residents whose everyday life is impacted by poverty, unemployment and crime. Conflicts and misunderstandings are bound to arise as Hirschhorn’s absolute devotion to art is confronted with the resident’s lack of prospects and fatalistic outlooks. The «Gramsci Monument» becomes a summer-long experiment where diverse worlds collide: blacks and whites, the art elite and street kids, party people and poets, politicians and philosophers. A nuanced film about art, politics and passion.

The Family(en)

Anne Hamilton-Byrne was beautiful, charismatic and delusional. She was also incredibly dangerous. Convinced she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Hamilton-Byrne headed an apocalyptic sect called The Family, which was prominent in Melbourne from the 1960s through to the 1990s. With her husband Bill, she acquired numerous children – some through adoption scams, some born to cult members – and raised them as her own. Isolated from the outside world, the children were dressed in matching outfits, had identical dyed blonde hair, and were allegedly beaten, starved and injected with LSD. Taught that Hamilton-Byrne was both their mother and the messiah, the children were eventually rescued during a police raid in 1987, but their trauma had only just begun.

Shootball(ca)

Manuel Barbero, father of a sexual abuse victim, and Joaquin Benitez, the pederast who abuse the son of Manuel and 20 more children, are the main characters of this documentary. The director of the film approaches these key figures of this story with a work of journalistic investigation. For the first time, a pederast speaks and confesses with his face uncovered in a documentary.

Preschool to Prison(en)

Preschool to Prison is a compelling examination of how the United States public school system is built and operated like prisons. Zero-tolerance policies are used to justify suspension and arrests that set up a pathway to send children of color and children with special needs from school to prison. Children are being suspended, restrained, dragged, physically manhandled, and subsequently arrested for minor offenses such as throwing candy on a school bus. These personal accounts from people affected by the school-to-prison pipeline give riveting tales about the generational impact on society.

Attila(en)

Filmmaker Stephen Hosier takes a journey with Richard Csanyi, his childhood friend, as he investigates the life and death of his twin brother Attila, who was found dead on a rooftop in 2020.

Rewind(en)

Digging through the vast collection of his father's home videos, a young man reconstructs the unthinkable story of his boyhood and exposes vile abuse passed through generations.

Forever Yours(fi)

Forever Yours is a film about children who have been taken into custody. Through the children, their biological parents and foster parents, the film depicts love in everyday life. The film explores the invisible bond between a child and a biological parent. Even when a child is taken into custody, the yearning for closeness to the biological parents and need for their approval never seems to disappear. This longing is a form of loneliness that the foster parents struggle to overcome. The film describes the entire foster care process: a child being brought into a shelter home, a teenager’s everyday life in a foster family, and siblings preparing to return to their biological mother, after five years in a foster family.

Detainment(en)

Two ten year-old boys are detained by police under suspicion of abducting and murdering a toddler.