Young Directors Tackle Tough Topics

Given they are part of Generation Y, one of the most indulged and materially endowed in the history of mankind, some young film directors are tackling tough topics in their work. And the content of their work is introducing audiences to portions of the world’s population that are anything but pampered.

In 2008, Grassroots Films of Brooklyn, New York brought The Human Experience to audiences. The film was the first full-length feature created by the company founded in 2001 by Joseph Campo, Charles Kinnane, Clifford Azize and Michael Campo. In the story, the filmmakers spent time with the homeless on the streets of New York, visited an orphanage in Peru and traveled to a colony of outcast lepers in the forests of Ghana, Africa.

The company’s latest film Child 31 tells the story of Mary’s Meals, a global movement started in 2002 to feed 200 hungry school children in Malawi. The program, which now feeds over 700,000 children a day around the world, provides one meal a day for children attending school using as much local products and employees as possible.

Around the world in Cambodia, US filmmakers Trevor Wright and A. Todd Smith, working with film studies students from Brigham Young University, followed a family living in a garbage dump on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Their documentary,

River of Victory, exposes the unbelievably difficult circumstances Sang Ly, her husband Ki and their two children Keo and Sokchea live in as they scrape together a daily
existence from recycling material they find and sell. Yet in the midst of the despair, Sang Ly maintains a remarkable determination and positive attitude. View the trailer for this film right here…

More details about the movies mentioned in this post…