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Children Underground [VHS]

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CHILDREN UNDERGROUND follows a group of children living one subway station in Bucharest, Romania. These unwanted children exist as a result of Ceaucescus strict policy of outlaying abortions and birth control. Most grew up in orphanages while others lived with their families in dire poverty. They believe that their lives are better underground. This documentary films the daily exploits of these children along with the struggles they encounter to rehabilitate themselves. In order to attend school they must come clean and stop sniffing paint. In addition, they must have their identity papers, which are almost impossible for most of them. The most enduring parts of this film center on the interviews of the various family members of these children. Truly heartbreaking is the family of the small boy who doesnt understand why their youngest child wont return home. Watching this film will certainly make you appreciate the material things often taken for granted.

Having just seen the DVD of Children Underground I must say strongly that this film should be seen by everyone in the postmodern first world. I saw these things for myself in Romania during December of 2000. The apathy on the streets of Bucharest was deep and dark. My friends there kept shrugging their shoulders saying; "What can you do?" A documentary on the thousands of dogs on the streets would be a riveting nightmare in itself. While I was there they held an election. The choice of presidential candidates was reduced to a hard-line old school communist and a new school fascist. The Communist won. People shrugged. The train stations and subway entrances were indeed hives for feral children. Im deeply grateful to Edet Belzberg for having the courage to descend into this manmade hell to bring these images back. It is my hope that the Romanians themselves find some of that same courage. I was moved that even at this stage of hell several of the kids held on to at least some idea of God. That could be seen by the cynically ironic of the West as the superstition of the hopeless, but perhaps it is also evidence that these children are not hopeless. To blame these problems on the lack of abortions or contraceptives is naïve and simplistic. Listen to the voices of the parents in this film. It is the apathy, the failure of courage and the utter selfishness reinforced by too many years of soul crushing communist dictatorship. We, ourselves, have no reason to gloat. Apart from having a surfeit of material possessions would we fare any better if the props were kicked from beneath us? Perhaps perhaps not. This film, along with Lilja 4-Ever, is a warning sign of something growing in this world. Robert L. Kaplan termed it The Coming Anarchy. It will spread. Meanwhile how will you respond to these things? With compassion or with apathy?

I have never seen anything like what is contained in this documentary. I am forever changed. I bought the DVD to be enlightened about "whatever it was" the film was about; I never thought it would have affected me the way it did. It can not be stated enough how imperative it is that people see this film.

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.

This powerful look at the utterly desolate lives of small band of Romanian street kids can be taken at face value as a condemnation of the policies of a brutal dictator. But it also speaks volumes about the realities of parents forced (by the Romanian government, in this case) to have unwanted children. The film can be divided into three acts. The first unflinchingly examines the children's daily lives in a subway station, begging for food, money, and water, and sniffing paint. The only upbeat aspect is the occasional joy that the children find in ordinary, childlike play-wading in a pond or playing tag. The second part reveals the dysfunctional families from which the children have either run away or been sent away. In one case, we learn that one of the boys is escaping an abusive father. He misses his sister but is too afraid of his father to even go near the house when a social worker tries to take him there. In another family, the mother has obviously shunned her son and daughter at the behest of her new husband. For me, the most heartbreaking scenes occurs here: A charity worker takes them home to see if the parents will take the children back, but the mother and step-father rationalize the kids' life on the streets; they can make more money there, they say. Then even this facade crumbles as it becomes obvious that the parents simply don't want the kids in their lives. The third part revisits the group after a gap of one year. We see that many of the younger kids have been taken up by charity organizations (which see them as having the best chance for rehabilitation), whereas the ending is not so happy for the older kids. This is a deeply saddening film but a must-see look at the misery created by a heartless government and irresponsible, thoughtless parents. This film and each of the children in it will stay with you forever. --MellowMonk.com

An unflinching look at children living on the margins of society. Children Underground does not sermonize, moralize, or attempt to resolve the issues that have contributed to what is apparently a pervasive problem in Romania. That is the brilliance of this film; it takes us into the world of these children and allows us to get a glimpse of the individual. Each person will come away with something different, because we are not told how to feel about what we are seeing and the children are not rescued. It is not a story of hardship and redemption. The film makers have made the hard choice not to step into the story, but are observers. The children tell their own story. It is disturbing to see children so young literally fighting for their daily survival. It was fascinating to come to know the individual traits of each child, to see the humanity in these "feral" children, and to witness the resiliency of the human spirit. The children are survivors, and while some argue that they have been so damaged by life on the street and lack of nurturing attachments that they are not able to be "rehabilitated". In witnessing the inherent humanity of each child, it is clear that they have evolved or adapted, in order to survive. This film reminded me of "Streetwise", which depicted Seattle street kids circa 1984. Another great movie that doesn't seek to frame the subject in any context other than letting the characters tell their own story.

I must tell you it was very tough to watch this from a emotional and a parent point of view to see how these poor children are living. What blew me away was how the adults walking thru this subway were either kicking and punching these kids,and how they spent their days huffing spray paint, sleeping on a cardboard bed, ( what must the winter's be like in the subway ??) and drinking water from a public fountain instead of going to school. It makes me want to hop on a plance to bring one of those kids back here to Texas to at least give them a chance at life before its too late. Absolutely fantasic film even if the subject matter was dark and grim.

Oscar-nominated documentary that explores the tragic policy decision by Romanian dictator Nicolei Ceaucescu to outlaw contraceptives and encourage his impoverished populace to have more children. Thousands of children were born to broken or dysfunctional families in a nation mired in political and economic instability, resulting in a large and rapidly growing population of homeless children (more than 20,000 estimated) in the city of Bucharest. (As an aside, there are some organizations that have short-term volunteer programs in Romania where you can work with some of these kids. One of these type programs is offered through Global Volunteers.) This film is important partly because you can see the very quick and long-term result of policy decision.

Ana, Mihai, Cristina, Macarena and others are a loosely aligned group of street kids who sleep on cardboard mats in the subway station. Some ran away from abusive parents while others grew up in orphanages. But they have come together in a sort of urban "Lord Of The Flies" scenario, where violence, paint sniffing and begging for handouts makes up the daily routine.

A few Romanian social workers and sympathetic foreigners try to help the kids get an education and find housing. But their well intentioned efforts are overwhelmed by a poor society scant on resources and mean spirited, selfish parents who seem to prefer their children living on the streets - one less mouth to feed after all.

Of course, street kids are a world wide issue, especially in Third World countries with underdeveloped social welfare systems. But the problem seems especially bad in Romania, where the anti-birth control policy of former dictator Ceaucescu has created a generation of unwanted chidren. I would have liked to see a little more attention given to how this idiotic policy caused such negative consequences. But the approach of director Edet Belzberg, to show the daily struggles of these kids in an up close and personal way, is certainly emotionally compelling.

I just want to start off by saying I have seen many documents in my time but none as compelling as this one. I felt so sad and angry at the same time watching this video. The children in the documentary seem so feral and yet so innocent at the same time, it's a strange feeling that overcomes you when you watch this film. Children of course should never live in these conditions right, however some choose to stay on the streets it is as though they are addicted to the freedom, drama and the pain. I couldn't watch, yet, I couldn't look away. It's so sad.