AIDS, drug abuse, police brutality, and other social ills in post-Soviet Russia.AIDS, drug abuse, police brutality, and other social ills in post-Soviet Russia.AIDS, drug abuse, police brutality, and other social ills in post-Soviet Russia.
- Directors
- Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 3 wins & 3 nominations total
Photos
Storyline
Did you know
- ConnectionsFeatured in The 77th Annual Academy Awards (2005)
Featured review
One for your conscience...
Gosh, I'm from Canberra, Australia, too, and I wouldn't want the IMDb international community to think we are all hyper-rational insensitives here, who can't actually comment on a film in terms of the human experience it communicates and the emotions it elicits from us! The only Western viewer who could feel anything other than simply extreme sadness and, yes, guilt at this portrayal of these children's lives would be one unable to face a degree of responsibility for them. How so? By having been part of a political era in the West which only engaged communism and post-communism destructively, so as to create the social debacle that these children are the products of. It WOULD be more comfortable to be unaware of the details of such unfathomable misery on the doorstep of Western Europe, but documentaries like this (and an analogous recent one documenting the lives of homeless children in Bucharest, Romania) deny us such convenience. Its inevitable effect on you, if you still have a conscience, will remind you of the memorable scene in that immortal film, "the Third Man" (1949), with Martins (Joseph Cotten) being driven from the children's hospital by Major Calloway (Trevor Howard). He is speechless, and his face is frozen by the horror and pathos he has just witnessed in the dying children made ill by Harry Lime's tainted blackmarket penicillin. It's interesting how a byword for unadulterated evil and injustice is always the suffering of children. And this documentary is the MORE powerful for being brief and not getting lost in the commentary and analysis that get away from the essence of the agony portrayed. Go live the horror of these innocent lives as if yours was one of them, experience just how far in fact away from theirs is yours and that of everyone you know, and try then to say these 35 minutes didn't change your life a bit.
helpful•116
- alexmatte
- Mar 7, 2006
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official site
- Language
- Also known as
- Дети Ленинградского
- Filming locations
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime35 minutes
- Color
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content