THEY CHOOSE YOU

ELLOS TE ELIGEN

By Mario E. LEVIT

CRUZ DEL SUR CINE - as PROD

Documentary - Completed 2015

The documentary brings attention to the myth that adoption exists to satisfy the wishes of adults. And it registers the moment in which the paradigm changes: it’s the children who have the right to have a family, not the adults who have the right to be parents.

Festivals
& Awards

Ventana Sur 2015
Video Library
    • Year of production
    • 2015
    • Genres
    • Documentary, True Story, Family
    • Countries
    • ARGENTINA
    • Languages
    • SPANISH
    • Budget
    • 0 - 0.3 M$
    • Duration
    • 62 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Mario E. LEVIT
    • Writer(s)
    • Mario LEVIT, Silvia BUGALLO, Marcelo MARAN
    • Producer(s)
    • Mario LEVIT (Cruz del Sur Cine)
    • Synopsis
    • DIRECTOR’S NOTE

      “How great it would be if you were to make a movie about this topic,” the married couple told me. They’d had 5 young brothers in pre-adoptive care for the past 5 years, with scarce resources. I didn’t know how to specify exactly which topic they were referring to. It could have been the injustice of not having the tools to fight for definitive adoption; the unprecedented adjustment to living with, educating, and offering care to 5 young people whose ages spanned from 7 months to 12 years when they began living together; or the uncommon decision to adopt older children. In that moment, it didn’t matter. It was seeing the look of that mother and listening to those young brothers that compelled me to produce a project that would give meaning to everything I knew as an audiovisual producer. That was the middle of 2010.

      My previous information was what appears in the mass media: news that is generally yellow, pink, red or black. A polychrome of colors that help to maintain the recipients’ interest and desire to be moved but which, I later found out, distance them from the central point of view of adoption. While researching material I found an (extensive) bibliography, people who had adopted in diverse forms, and various non-governmental organizations that helped to fulfill the wishes of the candidates for adoption in different ways. That is to say, there was a lot of material to guide me, but it was scattered.

      With this preparation, I began meeting the people who spend every day working for the protection of children’s rights and the proper functioning of the mechanisms that defend them. One of these, perhaps the most extensive in time, is adoption.

      One year later and I had completed the documentary “The Invisible Children” (a half-hour documentary that addresses the adoption of older children) and felt as if I had fulfilled and closed my commitment with a project destined to inform those who, like myself some time before, knew little and had constructed an erroneous idea of the topic.

      However, far from the end of an era, this was the beginning of an even greater process: the film’s distribution and exhibition. Having finished the movie, I discovered a group on the Internet that put up all the news, commentary, opinions and events that were published in Argentina and Latin America. They also had an editorial line that coincided with many of the voices I had heard within the system and determined to be outside the principal idea of the documentary. I was nothing but thankful for the work they had produced and regretful that I had not known of them before, as they would have facilitated my initial investigation. I got in contact with this group, “Ser Familia por Adopción” (“Being an Adoptive Family”), thinking I would find a non-governmental organization composed of dozens of people, because of the immeasurable work behind the website. To my surprise, I found two people, “the Lauris” from that moment on, who were overwhelmed