"The Children of Leningradsky" is a Polish 2005 documentary, so this one had its 10th anniversary last year. The language in here is Russian though, but that's kinda obvious given the topic. It is about homeless children living on the streets of Russia. The directors were Andrzej Celinski and Hanna Polak and for both of them, it was their biggest career success so far as this 35-minute documentary was nominated for an Academy Award a decade ago where it ironically lost to another documentary about children, American children actually. But back to this one here. It is really one sad little film. We find out why the children lost their homes, which frequently had to do with the parents not being capable of taking care of them anymore, frequently because of their own problems such as alcohol addiction. However, some of the children also say they want to be free and not live like in a prison and maybe made their own decision in living where they live now. But that's just as bad. One of the strong aspects of this documentary is the realism. Not only is all this taken from real life, but the children are also not depicted as little angels. They play pranks on homeless people, get on each other's nerves and sometimes even fight pretty violently. But that's what kids do. The ones who really hurt them are the grown-ups though. One example is in the middle of a film when we see a boy whose face is full of glue. A shocking scene, almost physically painful to watch. He is in terrible pain after a police officer got it all over the boy's face. Of course, this also shows the helplessness of the grown-ups in dealing with the situation as the children's drug abuse of glue is a major problem, what we experience ourselves in a heartbreaking turn of events at the very end of the film. It made me really sad. These 35 minutes are a look into the dark abyss of human civilization. I have no idea how things have changed in the decade since this film came out. I hope the kids are better now and that this problem could have been solved at least to some extent. I have little hope though. Thanks to the filmmakers for bringing these issues to our attention. A criminally underseen documentary and I really want you to check it out.
