Children Underground

Bucharest, the end of the nineties. Five children live in a metro station; the youngest is eight and the oldest sixteen. All of them have run from home or been thrown out. By day they beg in the station, at night they sleep there. What never leaves their hands is a bag with paint in it, which they inhale to hold off hunger and cold. The camera stays with them for a year and a half. There is fighting between them, and protection, and affection, and a hierarchy; the adults walk past. Edet Belzberg directs; a hundred and four minutes. The crew does not intervene and only records, a choice that was argued about when the film came out. It also touches on the consequences of the birth policy imposed in Romania under Ceaușescu. It was nominated for the documentary feature Oscar in 2002.