Child’s play – Child’s distress

The Life of a Foster Family STILL ONLINE

  • Niklas and Marianne - from an emergency case to the darling of the Steigert family

If the family grows from one day to the other, be it one or two or even five new members, difficult, traumatized little human beings, if there is an emergency – this is the daily life of a foster family in attendance. “In attendance” means to get entrusted with a foreign child from one minute to the other. If this child has lost his parents, or has to be separated from his parents. Be it because of drugs, prostitution, abuse. Then the foster family gets a new member. As a start for six to eight weeks. Maybe for longer. „You have to be professional“, all the foster mothers say. But they also admit: it doesn’t work without emotions. Professional emotions? How does this work? We want to document such a case. From the first moment when the child or the adolescent comes into the new family, at least for eight weeks, until a solutions has been found. What does this mean for the interior life of a family, for their own children? What kind of demands or excessive demands are waiting for the foster mother (they are mainly women, who have this unusual job), how is she able to devote herself to all the single members of her family? In the center of the film is the foster moster. From her and with her we will introduce the other protagonists: the youth welfare office, which has made the decision to separate the child from his parents, the biological parents, former foster children…

Produced by

SWR

A film by

Sigrid Faltin

Year

2009

Running time

90 min.

Team

  • cinematographer: Christian Zecha, Sigrid Faltin
  • sound: Michael Geißer, Markus Siegle, Christian Lehmann
  • editing: Ellen Scheider
  • music composer: Cornelius Schwehr, Andreas Radzuweit
  • commissioning editor: Gudrun Hanke El Ghomri

Awards

Media award of the German pediatricians 2010

„We produce documentary films - it's real life that interests us.“
Sigrid Faltin, white pepper films

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Contact Info

white pepper Filmgesellschaft

+49 761 40 84 40

mail (at) whitepepper.de

Schlierbergstrasse 25A
79100 Freiburg
Germany