We’ll Never Meet Childhood Again [2007]
Selected for the Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2007

"This is a very powerful and very moving film that reveals the love and care given to Romanian children with AIDS by a very dedicated group of people whose devotion is deep and sincere and whose success can be seen in the faces of those they have looked over after so carefully.

It is a reminder of all that is best in human beings and for that reason is very inspiring."

Tony Benn

We'll Never Meet Childhood Again is about the fraught path to adulthood traveled by a group of HIV+ young people living in Bucharest.

When Romania opened up in 1990, images of decrepit institutions housing disturbed, skeletal children were marked indelibly on minds around the world. The children were dubbed ‘Ceausescu’s Children’.

Those who survived that turbulent period - thanks in large part to international aid – then became known as ‘Romania's miracle babies’.

We'll Never Meet Childhood Again picks up the story shortly after the ‘miracle’.

The children, born into the chaos of abandonment and neglect, began a struggle toward reclaiming life as their own. Their modest aspiration was to break out of the definitions imposed on them by circumstance: to be seen not as tragic, or as miraculous, but simply as normal people.

The documentary features the children and foster parents of the NGO Health Aid Romania. Through interview and observational footage we are invited into their crowded homes, to learn about the difficulties of life played out on the margins - in the shadows of poverty and sickness.

Romanian society remains starkly prejudiced against those with HIV. The familiar dramas of childhood and adolescence have been played out under the distorting lens of societal fear, resentment and segregation. At the time of shooting – with the eldest of the children approaching adulthood – their acceptance in society is still dependent on secrecy.

The film offers no narration - and no easy answers to the problems faced by the ad hoc families. The foster parents describe a life in which survival is success, and normalcy an act of will.

They have reached the limits of what they can do for the young adults. Unless society itself changes to accommodate the teenagers, their lives will continue to be played out in the shadows.

We’ll Never Meet Childhood Again features striking oral testimony, candid archive material and revealing observational sequences.

The film was made independently by Sam Lawlor and Lindsay Pollock. It was filmed in 2004, and edited over the following two years. 

In 2007, it was accepted for screening in the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

The documentary was also selected for screening in the New York incarnation of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in June 2007.

You can read a review of the film, and a short interview with Sam Lawlor, at http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/reviews.php?film_id=12231

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You can find out more about the organization Health Aid UK, and sister organisation Health Aid Romania, at www.healthaiduk.org

You can find out more about Human Rights Watch at www.hrw.org and more about the film festival at http://www.hrw.org/iff/

You can also see a report on the issue by Human Rights Watch here - http://hrw.org/reports/2006/romania0806/

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Transcripts

For the film we recorded interviews with six sets of foster parents; Romanian and English staff of the charity Health Aid; and three of the foster children themselves. Only half of these interviews – greatly truncated – made it into the finished documentary, but all of the interviewees imparted valuable and moving insights into their lives and experiences. We present here edited transcripts for all of the interviews conducted for the film.

Foster parents:
Veronica & Lisette
Lavinia & Cristi
Mihaela & Florin
Lucian & Simona
Mihai & Sorina
Doamna [Mrs] Flori

Staff:
Tina Rotariu – Chief of Health Aid Romania
Adina – Health Aid social worker
Manuela – Health Aid social worker
Cristina – Health Aid office administrator
Anne McNicholas – Founder of the organisation Health Aid UK
Lois Pollock – Visiting social worker

Children:
Foster Child (M) 15
Foster Child (M) 16
Foster Child (F) 16