Samson & Delilah

A film by Warwick Thornton

Samson and Delilah's world is small, an isolated community in the Central Australian Desert. When tragedy strikes they turn their backs on home and embark on a journey of survival. Lost, unwanted and alone they discover that life isn't always fair, but love never judges.

Samson & Delilah is a love story, but perhaps not in the traditional sense. It deals with life on a remote Aboriginal community and the ways in which one young couple manage to escape from this mundane existence, exploring a love that develops out of survival – necessary love. It is a story about the many different ways in which love grows. Samson and Delilah have a very unusual relationship and their love is strong but understated and it develops as their trust develops. It's a film about people who are classed not even as people – let alone people who are allowed to love or have emotions. The story of these two young lovers is an important and unique story to tell, an untold story. In the end, even though life is going to be hard, there are real possibilities of success for them, a new life, hope.

Writer and director Warwick Thornton on his reasons for making the film:
"Storytelling has been a way of life for my people over thousands of generations, from singing stories under the stars to celluloid on the screen. The medium has changed but the reasons for telling our stories have not. I believe that this is a story I needed to tell. You have to believe in your stories and trust that an audience will take the journey with you and your characters. The audience's journey through the darkness makes the light brighter at the end. Samson and Delilah's unconventional love is that light. Their challenges and struggles are inspired by what I see every day as I journey through my own life in Central Australia. It is real."

Samson & Delilah won the Caméra d'Or for best first feature at Festival de Cannes 2009.

Elle s'appelle Sabine

A film by Sandrine Bonnaire

A sensitive and very personal portrait of Sabine Bonnaire, the autistic younger sister of French actress Sandrine Bonnaire.

Sabine is a 38-year-old whose autism went undiagnosed for decades and whose vivacious character was almost destroyed through years of inadequate care. Using footage filmed at Sabine's current care home as well as 25 years of home movies, Sandrine paints a picture of her sister as a once independent young woman with special needs to an adult now in need of constant supervision. The contrast between the young girl and the dispirited woman five years later is a terrible and moving indictment of state institutions and the effects of misdiagnosis. Now in a care home in the Charente region, Sabine has found a new lease of life thanks to proper care and the unwavering support of her family and friends.

As a girl, despite her unusual behaviour, Sabine would play with her siblings and take part in their games. She first attended a school for "abnormal" children but in fact had a great many abilities, including being able to read and write. At the age of 12 she was enrolled in the same school as Sandrine, but stood out as being different and suffered taunting by the other kids. She became self-destructive, biting and scratching herself and removing her clothes in the playground. With no specialised schools available, she then remained at home until the age of 27, during which years she was highly creative both in crafts and studies. Also developing a love for music, she took lessons for piano and very soon was playing Schubert and Bach. Sabine was always very close to her siblings but as they left home one by one she was left alone with her mother in the Parisian suburbs. Her sisters would visit her regularly and organise special outings for her. She became independent, able to go places on her own; she was cheerful, full of laughter and life. Sandrine then made Sabine's dream of America come true by taking her on a visit to New York.

When Sabine's mother moved from Paris to the country the sisters were able to visit less frequently. Sabine became isolated, and feeling abandoned, gradually began to decline, becoming destructive and violent towards her mother. Her sisters took her for a while in order to give their mother a break but Sabine continued to be violent and disruptive in each of the sisters' family homes. As a result, Sabine was sent to a psychiatric hospital for diagnosis, while the family searched in vain for a specialised home in which she could receive professional care. Sandrine eventually rented a flat close by where she installed Sabine with two home nurses. This arrangement, however, did not last and Sabine returned to the hospital where she stayed for five years. As her anxiety grew worse and she began self-mutilating, she was restrained and given high doses of neuroleptics. With her memory almost gone and her weight increasing by 30kg, Sabine's physical condition and mental faculties deteriorated further until she was unable to look after herself.

In 2001, Sandrine heard about a centre in Charente. While there were no places available, she met with the director who was seeking desperately to open a new home. Sandrine's fame as an actress was instrumental in gaining the necessary funding to eventually create the new home where Sabine still lives today. Now diagnosed as psychoinfantile with autistic behaviour, the treatment she receives is vastly improving her quality of life and it is hoped that the damage resulting from years of being institutionalised can eventually be repaired.

Mockingbird Don't Sing

A film by Harry Bromley-Davenport

On 4 November 1970 on the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite reported on the horrific story of a 13-year-old girl discovered in the small Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia who was still in diapers, barely able to walk and unable to speak. She had been kept in severe isolation by her parents with virtually no human contact for more than ten years. Confined to her bedroom, tied to her potty-chair by day, and at night restrained in an over-sized crib with a cover of metal screening, she was often forgotten and left alone to fend for herself. As Cronkite noted, it was one of the worst cases of child abuse ever to surface.

The tragic story of Genie (named Katie in the film) is the subject of this drama made in 2001. The director worked closely with Dr Susan Curtiss (Sandra Tannen in the film) now a linguistics professor at UCLA, who as a graduate student interested in language acquisition had been present from the early stages of Genie's rescue, starting a few months after she arrived at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles. Genie immediately won the hearts of all the doctors and scientists involved in her case.

The film begins with the early years of Katie's life of isolation, fear and abuse at the hands of her unstable and domineering father. Her mother, Louise, sensing that her husband is now potentially homicidal, leaves the house taking her daughter with her. Almost blind from cataracts, Louise is seeking medical aid treatment, but unwittingly enters a social services agency where Katie's physical condition immediately alerts the authorities' attention and she is taken into care at Children's Hospital. There she becomes the focus of observation and research by scientists and doctors who are eager to discover if Katie has a normal learning capacity and whether it is possible for her to recover completely from years of deprivation. For them, Katie is the perfect opportunity to test the Criticial Period Hypothesis which contends that the ability to acquire language is limited to the years before puberty, after which, as a result of neurological changes in the brain, the ability is lost.

In her new environment Katie makes rapid progress, but whilst her vocabulary grows she is still unable to string words together into meaningful, grammatical sentences. Scans indicate she may in fact be mentally retarded, either from birth or as a result of injury, chronic malnutrition or lack of mental stimulation. But over the following years Katie demonstrates a remarkable ability to develop non-verbal communication skills – illustrating complex ideas and even feelings in quick sketches, and by learning to use sign language. Her mental development however eventually levels out to a point from which she does not progress further.

Throughout the years of research, Katie's life is far from stable and we see how she becomes the victim in a tug-of-war between those who want to help her, study her, and provide her with a normal home environment. Funding for the research project is eventually withdrawn and Katie is passed around between her mother, the hospital, and several inappropriate fostering placements where she suffers further abuse. The only person who truly cares for her wellbeing and who can offer Katie a stable and loving home is Sandra Tannen but Katie's mother forbids it, threatening legal action against all those involved in her daughter's case. Katie begins to regress, deteriorating both physically and mentally and her mother places her in a home for retarded adults where it is believed she has remained for the rest of her life.

Genie's story is a very poignant one. Perhaps if therapy had been the priority over research then things may have turned out differently. She was a victim not only of abuse at the hands of her father but subsequently of the limitations of society's mechanisms for dealing with abused children. The film sensitively and accurately documents the system's initial success yet ultimate failure to address the needs of a very special child.

Twin Sisters

A film by Ben Sombogaart, based on the novel by Tessa de Loo.

Following the deaths of their parents in the 1920s, twins Anna and Lotte Bamberg are cruelly separated at the age of six. Contact between the two is immediately broken and the sisters grow up in separate worlds. Anna is sent to work on her uncle's farm in rural Germany, growing up in harsh circumstances, denied an education, and living amongst ignorant and brutal people. Lotte, who suffers from tuberculosis, is welcomed into a loving home by her upper middle class Dutch relatives where her health is restored and she receives a good education. For many years the girls try to contact each other but both families intercept their letters, making each believe that the other sister is dead.

Both attempt to renew their bond several times but fail each time for different reasons. The story follows their lives as they eventually meet and try to reconcile their differences while World War II impacts each of their lives in different ways. Anna marries a young Austrian SS officer, while Lotte becomes engaged to a Jewish musician – following different and opposing paths, both sisters' lives are irrevocably changed. More than half a century later, Anna seeks out her unwilling sister, only to find that their different experiences during the war years has damaged their relationship possibly forever.

A deeply moving story focusing on the loyalties, fates and passions of two women torn apart by war.