All the Invisible Children

Seven short films - each one focused on the plight of a different child protagonist. This film is a very special initiative. Three years ago, the project’s producers sought to create a cinematic project that would raise awareness about the plight of children around the world. Both UNICEF and the World Food Programme, the leading United Nations organizations devoted to children, lent their support and will receive the net profits from the film. The producers then approached a number of filmmakers – amongst them some of the best-known names in international cinema – who leapt at the opportunity to direct a short segment and contributed their efforts for free. In All the Invisible Children, Brazil, Italy, England, Serbia, Burkina Faso, China and the United States provide the backdrops for deeply moving portraits of children who face terrible adversity – deprivation, disease, violence – on a daily basis. The struggles of street children to survive is a theme common to the episodes by Katia Lund, Stefano Veneruso and Emir Kusturica; we find these unfortunates collecting cardboard and scrap metal in the streets of São Paolo or stealing to get by in Naples and the Serbian countryside. Mehdi Charef focuses on the brutal armed conflicts that have torn Africa apart, and we witness shocking images of child warriors who wield machine guns with practised ease. Woo’s section deals with two girls from different classes whose paths cross when one’s discarded doll becomes the most treasured possession of the other. Spike Lee’s film is a searing examination of an HIV-positive Brooklyn teenager who is the daughter of two junkies, while Jordan and Sir Ridley Scott join forces to explore the ravaged life of a shell-shocked photojournalist who escapes back into his childhood to salvage his humanity. Each of the segments that comprise this affecting omnibus work is a labour of love, told with all the compassion these remarkable filmmakers can bring to these all-too-common situations.