Documentary films, I haven’t seen a lot of them but I do love them, from ones like Bowling For Columbine and An Inconvenient Truth.

Not only do they teach you, but you learn a few things from them. That’s exactly what this short documentary film does.

Released in 2005 by a polish filmmaker The Children Of Leningradsky follows several homeless children… yeah I’m going to stop right here and throw a little disclaimer at ya, the details I’m about to launch in to are not pretty, they are not pleasant nor are they easy for me to type… that being said you’ve been warned.

We follow several homeless children around Leningradsky train station, we hear from four of them as they tell us their story on how they became homeless, one boy stabbed his abusive father while he was in a drunken fit of rage, one boys father at the age of two denied that he was his son, and another child was raped and the mum accepted a wad of cash instead of going to court.

For the winter months the children go underground where the pipes are to keep warm, they laugh, they play with one another, they argue and they fight, they also drink vodka, smoke and sniff glue.

Other times they are fighting with older homeless people (adults rather) but I think the real kicker comes from what the police do to them, I’m talking beating them, pouring glue over one boys head, we hear that a boy was raped and strangled to death and the police beat some kids and held them for as long as 48 hours… even though these kids had nothing to do with said crime.

It really isn’t a pleasant documentary at all and I’m still trying to process it, the final kicker comes at the end of the film as one poor thirteen year old girl sadly overdoses on glue and loses her life, the children hold a funeral for her as well.

Like I said it’s a really hard hitting documentary and one that is very hard to watch at times specially certain scenes involving the children sniffing glue.

I can’t say I enjoyed watching it I found it really hard to watch, but that doesn’t mean to say that it wasn’t interesting no, it was more eye opening, and eye opening thirty minutes to say the least.

10/10 mainly because it was so hard hitting and so gut wrenchingly sad, but again it was eye opening.

As always guys… catch ya later 🙂