Cinema Club with Yelena Pogrebizhskaya

The 24th of April saw the 4D cinema-theatre of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre host another of its now-traditional Cinema Club discussion events.  This time, we watched the documentary film “The Little Boys From Freedom Street” which stands by itself as a film in its own right, but also as a logical continuation of the film “Mama, I’m Going to Kill You” which was discussed previously as part of the Week of Tolerance.  The main hero of “Little Boys” is Alexander, a young person who volunteers in a children’s home, adopting a young boy there, and later, several years on, his elder brother too.   Alexander writes about the difficulties of going through the legal process and the reactions of those around him in his blog, where he openly describes all the nuances of adapting to and getting used to each other in such a situation.  The public response to his openness varies from downright slander and accusations of all manner of mortal sins, to active support.  The film enables us to peer into a home in which adopted children and their father live, seeing how they live, what problems arise for them, how they solve them, and how a father can bring up two lads without any female assistance.  Both the film and the discussion left the participants with a wealth of very different but powerful emotions, the whole thing ending not with a full-stop, but a question mark, as each was challenged to decide for themselves “what exactly is for the best.”