Ask Us Who We Are Documentary

This new documentary opened to a sold-out audience in Vermont. It begins with teens and young adults recalling their childhoods.

The review in VT Digger says, “But the fear and uncertainty of these unstable homes quickly becomes fear and uncertainty of a different sort, as these youngsters are removed from their homes and placed in foster care.

The fateful day that one unpredictable situation was traded for a situation equally unpredictable is etched in their memories.

“Imagine just getting dropped in a stranger’s house,” one youngster entreats the audience.

“You move in…and hope that they’re nice,” another says. Underlying this uncertainty is an emotion of a different kind, perhaps not obvious to someone who can’t imagine why getting out of a bad situation wouldn’t seem like the best thing in the world.”

The county website gives the following description: “Ask Us Who We Are is a documentary film focused on the challenges and extraordinary lives of youth in foster care. The film is a reflection on loss and the search for belonging and finding family. Although the film highlights the heartbreak that many foster care youth carry with them as they move through their lives, the documentary also reveals the tremendous strength and perseverance that grows out of their determination to survive and thrive.

The documentary also focuses on the lives of foster care parents and kinship families that open their homes to children. Through small and large acts of kindness these adults can change the course of children’s lives and give them a sense of place if only for a brief time. In addition, the film highlights two parents who lose their children to the system and struggle to be reunited with them.

Ask Us Who We Are is about the search for home, community, and the transformative power of love in the midst of fractured and often broken lives. The film breaks open stereotypes and gives voice to those who are often not heard”

See the movie trailer here. Its show schedule is here.
[Kingdom County.org ]

Film captures loss and longing that pervades foster home experience
[VT Digger.org 5/2/11 by Sylvia Fagin]

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