Browse Films

THESE ARE OUR CHILDREN  reveals how the devastating effects of poverty, HIV/AIDs, and violence on Kenyan children are successfully being reduced through grassroots interventions. Over 300,000 children live on the streets Nairobi, stealing, begging, and prostituting themselves for food and money and more than one million children in Kenya have been affected by the HIV-AIDs crisis. Yet, through hope and hard work, we learn from the children and the adults they work with that schools and grass-root organizations are creating a future in which all children can realize their dreams to be teachers, pilots, doctors, generals, and world-famous soccer players.

A rich ethnographic film, These Are Our Children, provides a moving portrait of the challenges facing children and families in contemporary Kenya. The abstract problems of poverty, AIDS, urban migration, and corruption are rendered into tangible and keenly felt realities through the use of the personal stories of the Kenyan children who are made most vulnerable to rapidly changing social conditions. The voices of children themselves are complemented by the stories of aid workers whose own struggles to address social problems--like the growing population of Nairobi's "street children"--make clear the difficulties of finding simple solutions to complex social dilemmas. This is an excellent addition to any film library, and will be a useful and welcome tool to facilitate broader discussions of urbanization, international development, and gender and sexuality in Africa.
Lydia Boyd, PhD, Department of African and African American Studies, UNC-Chapel Hill

AWARDS & SCREENINGS:

• San Diego Black Film Festival January 26-29, 2012

• Athens International Film and Video Festival, April 2011

  First Place, Feature Documentary

• COMMFEST Global Community Film Festival, Sept 2011,

  Toronto, Canada