LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THIS POWERFUL, DEEPLY MOVING FILM!

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THIS POWERFUL, DEEPLY MOVING FILM, currently playing at the Laemmle Glendale, and which will have its broadcast premiere on PBS Independent Lens on May 8th!..I found the film especially resonant as an adoptee who spent my first eleven months in a foster home, which left me with lifelong abandonment fears...I found myself identifying at various times with each of the subjects of the film in different ways...with Sam's longing to find his missing mom, with his later reflecting that his brother might have processed his feelings about their missing mom by having expressed them, and that much of his desire to work with troubled youth sprang from an inability to heal his own pain (much like my motivation for working with immigrants for so many years), and with his abandoning others before they could abandon him, with Reed's bonding with his brother Sam over their shared connection with an emotionally damaged parent, with Jois feeling like she could never be good enough for her adoptive family to love...it wrestles with intergenerational trauma in creative and compelling ways, and traces each family member's healing journey, and especially the ways in which "Sam Now" is seeking to help heal his own intergenerational trauma, and , in doing so, help others heal theirs, as opposed to "Sam Before", whose need to help others had sprung largely from an inability to heal his own pain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQfk1yxEbSg