The Cover

Like many homeless children throughout the world, they seek to anesthetize themselves against the harshness of the world by huffing paint in plastic bags. It's cheap and it completely cuts them off from the world. Sadly, they seek it out above all else, even above food - because it makes them forget that they're hungry. And despite putting them in a drunken, brain damaged stupor, the children roam the streets, fighting and running, doing whatever they can to get drugs.

Children Underground is a mostly structureless documentary, simply allowing the camera to observer their lives, and the frank madness of their lives. It really is at once frightening and fascinating to watch these children as they live completely unsupervised, mostly ignored by the populace as they go about their daily routine travelling on the subway and eating lunch. It's obvious that some of the children are more scared than others. Some rise to become natural leaders, while some simply break down. Nearly every child who is forced into this is socially stunted. Like feral children, they yell at people, fight - it's as though because of the lack of interaction and love in their lives, that much of their humanity has been stripped away from them.

But this isn't their fault, and not everybody has given up on these children. Social workers do their best to convince the families that taking their children back is probably the best thing for the child's well being. But it becomes clear that the children returning to the family that abandoned them is often the worst possible solution. In some cases, the parents literally have no way to feed their children, so they believe that it's better for them to attempt to get food out on the streets. In other cases, the children refuse to return to their parents because they are emotionally and physically abusive.

Children Underground is a documentary that grabs you from the instant that it comes on the screen. I popped this movie in late one night planning on only watching a portion of it, but I was so enthralled, I kept the movie going into the early hours of morning. The film presents no solution to the problem in Romania, nor is it a grand achievement in directing or editing. Where it does succeed is bringing to light a prevalent problem around the world, not just in Romania. It succeeds in shining a light on these children underground.

Movie Grade: A+

Video: 3 out of 5
The film was shot on DV and presented as such. There's no funny post production tricks (except for a few sections which look like they may have been shot in 16mm), and it's presented as a full frame.
Full Frame - 1.33:1

Ana waits in the subway

Audio: 3 out of 5
There's no music or narration to speak of, so the two channel audio works perfectly here.
Romanian (Dolby 2.0) - Some interviews are in unsubtitled English

Extras: 1 out of 5
The most interesting extra is the "what are they doing now?" text presentation that contains updates on all of the children higlighted in the film. Like the movie itself, it's mostly sad, but incredibly powerful. There's also a short text extra on how the director decided to do this film.

Overall: 4 out of 5
Despite its rather thin presentation, Children Underground is a fascinating enough documentary to justify the purchase. It's a moving and scary look at young people almost completely forgotten by society.

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