Synopsis:
In Durban, South Africa, a group of feisty women are working day and night to protect the area’s many abused and neglected children. Watch them at work through the remarkable observational lens of one of Britain’s most acclaimed doc makers, Kim Longinotto.
Runaway children find their way to their door. The police ask them to accompany them on sensitive raids. And quite a few men in Durban, South Africa have experienced the might of their wrath firsthand. They are the “Bobbi Bears” – an organisation of women working day and night to protect the area’s many abused and neglected children. In extremely intimate scenes, we watch them use teddy bears to gently pry horrifying stories from the children who they take under their wing. The ‘Rough Aunties’ then turn their articulate anger onto the perpetrators – including a social services system which continues to return children to their abusers. In typical Longinotto style we are firsthand witnesses both to the crimes which adults can inflict upon vulnerable children but also to almost heartbreaking scenes of compassion which bear testimony to the goodness of womankind.
Festivals
Grand Jury Prize, Sundance 2008
IDFA, 2008
Sheffield Doc Fest, 2009
Synopsis:
In Durban, South Africa, a group of feisty women are working day and night to protect the area’s many abused and neglected children. Watch them at work through the remarkable observational lens of one of Britain’s most acclaimed doc makers, Kim Longinotto.