Appropriate for: College/University
Browse Films
Are rich foreigners buying babies or are poor children being offered the chance for a better life? As the number of adoptions from Guatemala to the U.S. continues to rise dramatically, so does the controversy. What adoptive parents see as an act of love, others view with deep suspicion. GOODBYE BABY examines the ramifications that money, private lawyers, media coverage and women's rights have on the adoption process. Informed by the filmmaker's own experiences - she's the mother of two children adopted from Guatemala, where she's lived on and off during the past 25 years - GOODBYE BABY provides an insightful look into the dramatic and sometimes difficult world of intercountry adoption.
GOODBYE BABY provides layer upon layer of valuable information and insights. It offers a rare, penetrating glimpse into controversial adoption issues (in this case within Guatemala). It examines a process that touches millions of lives and thoughtfully explores its complexities. This is an intimate and compelling film, and an important one. People within the community will need to see it; everyone interested in the complex, changing world of modern families will simply want to.
Adam Pertman, Executive Director, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, author of "Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming America"
A superb film documenting the many faces of international adoption in Guatemala. GOODBYE BABY paints a richly complex picture, managing to be simultaneously fair, illuminating, and powerfully emotional.
Elizabeth Bartholet, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Author of "Family Bonds: Adoption & the Politics of Parenting"
GOODBYE BABY... allows for the raising of pertinent ethical, social and political issues in a way that invites reasoned debate rather than simplistic answers. Recommended.
Video Librarian
full review
GOODBYE BABY is a provocative study of the dilemmas facing Guatemalans and North Americans involved in one of the largest adoption processes in the world today. As an adoptive mother of two Guatemalan children, award winning filmmaker Patricia Goudvis provides a compassionate view of the opportunities for adoptive children, and the complicated and at times heart rending struggles of adoptive parents. But as a decades-long chronicler of Guatemala's struggles with brutal oppression, grinding poverty and pervasive corruption, Goudvis insightfully lays bare the hidden impact of global inequality, a culture of machismo, and the legal exploitation of desperately poor Guatemalan women and girls left with little choice but to give up their newborn children. This film is a powerful indictment of the continued inhumanity of global inequality, and at the same time an impassioned testament to the struggles of those who would make it otherwise.
Doug Murray, Professor of Sociology,
Colorado State University
Finally there's an accurate portrayal of the legal, political and emotional issues involved in Guatemalan adoptions. If you're thinking about adopting or already have - from Guatemala or elsewhere - GOODBYE BABY is not to be missed.
Joan Clark, Executive Director,
ODS Adoption Community of New England, Inc.
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