Foster Child

Colour, 35 mm
Philippines, 2007, 98 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Thelma lives with her husband Dado and two sons Gerald and Yuri in a poor area of Manila where the local department of foster care entrusts families with abandoned children until they are formally adopted. The officials visit the foster mothers and make sure the children are being well taken care of. Thelma is one such mother, and her latest "son", named John John, has been part of her family for three years. But now the time has come when Thelma has to turn the boy over to his adoptive parents from America. We are taken through the last day that she spends with the child, who has become very attached to her. A seemingly ordinary story about a feeling that is increasingly rare in today’s world, about the love of a woman for a child whose own mother has abandoned him.

About the director

Brillante Mendoza (b. 1960, San Fernando, the Philippines) graduated from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila and started his career as a production designer in feature films, television, theatre, and in occasional television commercials. His first feature film The Masseur (Masahista, 2005) won him a Golden Leopard in the video section of the Locarno IFF. This was followed by Summer Heat (Kaleldo, 2006), which received a Netpac Award in Jeonju, and The Teacher (Manoro, 2006), which won an Award in Turin in 2006 and took the prizes for best film and direction at Cinemanila 2006. The film Foster Child was screened in its world premiere in the section Directors’ Fortnight at this year’s festival in Cannes.