Fostering Mixed-Race Children in Ukraine: ‘Family Portrait in Black and White’ |
Fostering Mixed-Race Children in Ukraine: ‘Family Portrait in Black and White’
The New York Times
2012-07-13
Neil Genzlinger, Television Critic
“Family Portrait in Black and White,” a documentary by Julia Ivanova, leaves a lot of questions unanswered, which is frustrating, but it gets high marks for honesty.
It would have been easy for this film, which is about a woman in Ukraine and the more than 20 adopted and foster children she has taken in, to be a hagiography, but instead it’s a portrait of an imperfect solution in a country that seems to have a lot that needs solving.
The woman’s name is Olga Nenya, and she has made it her particular mission to provide a home for mixed-race children who have been abandoned by their parents. That is a brave thing for her to do because such children are shunned by many in Ukraine, which has a virulent skinhead movement. We don’t learn much about Ms. Nenya, like why she got into this work or what financial resources she is drawing on to put food in all those hungry mouths…
Read the entire review here.
Tags: Julia Ivanova, Neil Genzlinger, New York Times, Olga Nenya, The New York Times, Ukraine