The Journey Home: A Romanian Adoption

In this gut-wrenching, beautifully filmed documentary, Canadian parents Al and Sandy take their 12-year-old daughter Alexandra (adopted when she was three) back to Romania to meet her birth mother. At the beginning, the film intercuts 1990 footage of horrific conditions in Romanian orphanages (starving, sad-eyed children covered with flies) with current shots that reveal healthy youngsters in cheerful surroundings resembling Western day care centers (though 20 children are still deposited here every day, and over 100,000 institutionalized children yearn for real homes). Before the reunion on the sixth day of their journey, the cameras follow the trio as they visit Romanian orphanages--places where Alexandra might have spent her first three years. Viewers see 4-year-old Nicolai; left at an orphanage by his parent, the boy cries inconsolably, comprehending little but his abandonment. They also meet 13-year-old "orphan" Sandra, who visits her indigent mother twice a month in her one-room basement apartment. Back in Sandra's orphanage for teenage girls, we see how much of a "family" the girls are to one another, as they console a companion whose parents left her in an orphanage while keeping her sister. At film's end, Alexandra finally meets her birth mother, who seems rather blank and uncaring, as well as her warm and wonderful grandmother and grandfather and her brother and cousins. Although Alexandra says very little (diagnosed with ADD and hyperactivity, she is unsure of herself, struggles in school, and takes Ritalin), it does appear that she finds a measure of comfort and understanding from this emotionally-charged trip. Highly recommended as a sure-fire spark to discussions about adoption, street kids, cultural differences, and family. [Note: this video is also being sold to consumers for $30.] Aud: H, C, P (M. Pendergrast)