Children Underground

During Ceauºescu’s regime in Romania, contraceptives and abortion were outlawed. The nation’s work force had to be increased. Thousands of unwanted children were born, many of them ending up on the streets. Today, twenty thousand of them roam the streets of Bucharest. Children Underground presents a portrait of five of these. The shooting process took four years, the protagonists of this disturbing documentary were followed through different periods of their lives: on the streets when they were living in the subway, in a centre for homeless children, some of them even in their mothers’ houses. Spending a lot of time with the children, the filmmaker witnessed their most intimate moments and captured them. Even when the kids are fighting, they seem to completely forget the presence of the camera. Hooked on paint sniffing, beaten up, these eight or ten-year-old kids are already so traumatised that many scenes come to the audience as a huge shock. The roaring sounds as well as the muffled lights of the subway where the children spend most of their time seem to be an inferno from which there is no escape. The colours in the film sometimes fade into black and white, creating the impression that these unfortunate children’s hopes are constantly being pushed further away. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)