Children Underground
by Edet Belzberg
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ana Turturica, Cristina Ionescu, Marian Turturica, Mihai Alexandre Tudose, Violeta 'Macarena' RosuDirector: Edet Belzberg
Brand: New Video
Cinematographer: Wolfgang Held
Producer: Edet Belzberg
Editor: Jonathan Oppenheim
Producer: Jonathan Oppenheim
Producer: Alan Oxman
Producer: Michel Negroponte
Producer: Mona Nicoara
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 104 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-02-25
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: New Video Group
Movie Reviews of Children Underground
Movie Review: not for those with virginal eyes
Summary: 5 Stars
I haven't written a review for a very, very long time; there simply hasn't been one worth writing. And after noting the lack of reviews, or seemingly brief reviews, for "Children Underground," I was compelled to do so. I now understand why the majority of reviews merely repeat what we're already told about the documentary, or simply state the pertinence of viewing this. I'm not going to tell you what you've already read here, for the basic plot summary and details cannot prepare you for the viewing experience. There's simply no way I could've been prepared for "Children Underground," despite my extensive collection of documentaries, many of which I thought to be deeply disturbing.
This is something you must see to believe; it takes us on an intimate journey to the darkest depths of a reality we've never even fathomed, let alone believed could exist. These children, this footage, the way in which it's filmed, the lack of narration, lack of any pre-text besides the initial text at the beginning of the documentary (which I noticed several viewers critiqued), all make this one of the most riveting, engrossing, heartbreaking, and simultaneously unbearable documentaries of all time. You are literally transported into the world of these children, the "aurolac kids."
Through director/producer Edet Belzberg's intimate, shockingly raw, unadultered filming, which is a seemingly impossible feat in and of itself, the viewer is guided through the every day lives of these "children." These are not children we, as a generalized society, imagine encountering, let alone imagine passing by "apathetically" with no way to truly aid them on a daily basis. (I hesitate to use the term "apathetically," as I am not from Bucharest, let alone a third-world country, and therefore in no way wish to judge those whose lives I have never lived, cannot fathom living.)
These are child adults; they speak in tongues normally reserved for those far superior in age, curse profusely, huff aurolac, a highly addictive and inevitably lethal industrial paint, steal, smoke cigarettes, fight with a hardened sense of brutality, and seem to grasp the reality of the hardship and unchangeability of their lives more gracefully than most adults do. Yet through all this, Belzberg is able to capture bits and pieces of the surviving innocence these children possess, humanizing them, revealing to the viewer that these are indeed still children, a notion that becomes progressively more blurred by the footage as the documentary unravels. Footage of a heavy crying spell of Ana, the questionably mentally ill 10-year-old runaway, a fleeting glimpse of the children playing and laughing with childlike innocence in the park, and a harrowing clip of Ana's 8-year-old brother, Marian, clinging on to Ana with a vehemence typically reserved for one's own mother while attempting to safely sleep in the dingy Bucharest subway that had become his home, meld together to maintain a sense these children's actual age.
Meanwhile, by capturing the dismal attempts of social workers to contact the parents, who, hardened by poverty and depression, simply cannot afford to provide for their children; or worse, have induced such fear into their children through alleged, but never acknowledged, severe beatings so as to cause boys like Mihai, a highly intelligent 11-year-old, to run away, Belzberg enables the viewer to see that these children are not simply left ignored by their own country, their own population. They are not products of mere domestic abuse, parental neglect, or mental illness; they are the results of a nation gone awry, a system collapsed.
And while perhaps Belzberg does not delve into the circumstances leading up to the footage captured, it's seemingly irrelevant to the film. At the time of the filming, this was the present, this was the raw, unexposed reality that was occurring at that moment. What led up to it, what circumstances brought these children together, what the entire picture was at that moment, second, year in Bucharest did not matter. Belzberg captured something unique, a reality that if not captured would have been forgotten, laid to rest complacently amongst the other past and present realities we, as generalized humans, could not, do not, would not have the opportunity to even conceive of. This is not a documentary produced for the sake of moralizing, creating order out of chaos, critiquing a country and political system, or anything of the sort. "Children Underground," is an unpretentious, objective view into a haunting, nearly unbearably startling, reality we have never seen, let alone will soon forget.
Summary of Children Underground
Easily one of the most astonishing and engaging cinematic works of the past decade, CHILDREN UNDERGROUND is a profoundly intimate and heart-wrenching drama -- an Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary Feature in 2001, and winner at nearly every majorThis astonishingly intimate documentary follows five homeless children in Romania, where the collapse of communism has led to a life on the street for 20,000 children. From a 16-year-old girl who runs her gang with a mixture of brutality and compassion, to a small, intelligent, and remarkably articulate 12-year-old boy, these children seem at first feral and frightening--yet over the course of the movie their loneliness, desperation, and glimpses of hope will transform how you perceive them. Make no mistake: this is difficult watching. As Children Underground explores the meager state resources to support these children and follows some of the children back to their difficult families, the scope of the problem becomes larger and more irresolvable. But this documentary offers an unblinking and deeply compassionate insight into the extremes of human existence; you will not forget it easily. --Bret Fetzer
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