Foster Child

Thelma is the mother of a poor urban family. Her husband Dado and their teenage sons Gerald and Yuri live in the same house. The family has an arrangement with a local foster care agency. What they do is this: care for abandoned babies for a time, until the formal adoption goes through. The film looks at the daily order of that house, the feeding, the putting to sleep, the keeping of a routine. The knowledge that the baby will one day be handed over stays in the house the whole time. So caring and parting become two halves of the same job. Cherry Pie Picache and Eugene Domingo appear in Brillante Ma Mendoza’s Philippine film of 2007, ninety eight minutes long.