The Children of Leningradsky (2005) User Reviews

Blood-chilling, terrifying...

[el_monty_BCN · 9/10 · 9 May 2005]

This is a warning: Approach this documentary with great care. Depicting the daily miseries of orphans of Moscow who lead lives that we could not imagine even in our worst nightmares, it is horror in its purest state, so heart-wrenching that you will have to make an effort to be able to watch it from start to finish without having to look away. Images that will probably haunt you for a long time, if not forever. God, I can feel my eyes welling up just remembering them... It is unbelievable that these horrors, which seem to be a tale from centuries ago, are allowed to take place every day, not just in this wretched 21st century world, but so close to us rich westerners, in a European city which has never been considered to be in "the third world".

Near the end, one of the characters says something like "God loves everybody, not just the Russians; he even loves the Chechens; but, most of all, he loves the children". It sounds to me like the best advice Mr. Putin could ever receive. And these words of wisdom don't come from a cultivated analyst, they come from an abandoned child who dwells in the streets of the same city he lives in...

Really tragic all along

[Horst_In_Translation · 8/10 · 31 July 2016]

"The Children of Leningradsky" is a Polish 2005 documentary, so this one had its 10th anniversary last year. The language in here is Russian though, but that's kinda obvious given the topic. It is about homeless children living on the streets of Russia. The directors were Andrzej Celinski and Hanna Polak and for both of them, it was their biggest career success so far as this 35-minute documentary was nominated for an Academy Award a decade ago where it ironically lost to another documentary about children, American children actually. But back to this one here. It is really one sad little film. We find out why the children lost their homes, which frequently had to do with the parents not being capable of taking care of them anymore, frequently because of their own problems such as alcohol addiction. However, some of the children also say they want to be free and not live like in a prison and maybe made their own decision in living where they live now. But that's just as bad. One of the strong aspects of this documentary is the realism. Not only is all this taken from real life, but the children are also not depicted as little angels. They play pranks on homeless people, get on each other's nerves and sometimes even fight pretty violently. But that's what kids do. The ones who really hurt them are the grown-ups though. One example is in the middle of a film when we see a boy whose face is full of glue. A shocking scene, almost physically painful to watch. He is in terrible pain after a police officer got it all over the boy's face. Of course, this also shows the helplessness of the grown-ups in dealing with the situation as the children's drug abuse of glue is a major problem, what we experience ourselves in a heartbreaking turn of events at the very end of the film. It made me really sad. These 35 minutes are a look into the dark abyss of human civilization. I have no idea how things have changed in the decade since this film came out. I hope the kids are better now and that this problem could have been solved at least to some extent. I have little hope though. Thanks to the filmmakers for bringing these issues to our attention. A criminally underseen documentary and I really want you to check it out.

An incredible movie

[Shahzad-Tiwana · 10/10 · 19 February 2006]

Well I have just finished watching this movie and cant hold my tears. It has shown the plight of the the most vulnerable victims of the post soviet union. These are the children forgotten by their families and the world. They are struggling to survive in the harsh realities of life. They are looked upon everyday but forgotten in the next moment. The most tragic part of the movie was when the beautiful little girl dies. I must strongly recommend this movie to watch. It is hard to watch but we cannot shy away from the realities. The best we can do is to donate as much as we can to the Russian homeless children, the links are in the end of the movie and in website. Lets make a difference in someones life.

One for your conscience...

[alexmatte · 10/10 · 7 March 2006]

Gosh, I'm from Canberra, Australia, too, and I wouldn't want the IMDb international community to think we are all hyper-rational insensitives here, who can't actually comment on a film in terms of the human experience it communicates and the emotions it elicits from us! The only Western viewer who could feel anything other than simply extreme sadness and, yes, guilt at this portrayal of these children's lives would be one unable to face a degree of responsibility for them. How so? By having been part of a political era in the West which only engaged communism and post-communism destructively, so as to create the social debacle that these children are the products of. It WOULD be more comfortable to be unaware of the details of such unfathomable misery on the doorstep of Western Europe, but documentaries like this (and an analogous recent one documenting the lives of homeless children in Bucharest, Romania) deny us such convenience. Its inevitable effect on you, if you still have a conscience, will remind you of the memorable scene in that immortal film, "the Third Man" (1949), with Martins (Joseph Cotten) being driven from the children's hospital by Major Calloway (Trevor Howard). He is speechless, and his face is frozen by the horror and pathos he has just witnessed in the dying children made ill by Harry Lime's tainted blackmarket penicillin. It's interesting how a byword for unadulterated evil and injustice is always the suffering of children. And this documentary is the MORE powerful for being brief and not getting lost in the commentary and analysis that get away from the essence of the agony portrayed. Go live the horror of these innocent lives as if yours was one of them, experience just how far in fact away from theirs is yours and that of everyone you know, and try then to say these 35 minutes didn't change your life a bit.

Sad and powerful, too intense for young people

[samwise24601 · 10/10 · 13 January 2006]

I saw this on Cinemax this morning, January 13, 2005. It is one of the most powerful films I have ever seen. The end when we learn that Tanya has died, and we see the people who may be her parents crying around her little casket infuriated me. How dare they act like that, when they didn't care for her when she was alive. They did not have the right to cry for her when they allowed her to live in the sewers the way they did. That beautiful little girl, raped and left to live like an animal. Things like this should never happen to children anywhere. The more I think about it the madder I get. There is one scene where a little boy is letting his puppy drink water from his mouth because he does not have a bowl for the water. The filth these children are covered with, and the way the older ones take from the younger smaller ones is a horror to see. And the abuse by the police does not make it any better for them.

Provocative, but highly exploitative

[s3160292 · 5/10 · 28 February 2006]

It's hard to tell exactly how to approach this documentary. Even at face value it is hard to judge how honest this portrayal is and, particularly, how this small group of delinquents fits into a bigger picture. Even the most minimalist narrative could has solved this later problem, but all we are given are connivingly edited snippets of interviews with the children depicted. I would honestly be surprised if you could not find a similar sample of abused white trash street kids with similar lives in many western cities. I don't doubt that the problem is more prevalent in many of the economically collapsed Eastern European nations, but The Children of Leningradsky totally failed to illustrate this.

I find it very hard to see this documentary as anything but exploitative. The tragic events the documentary follows are depicted in a very one-sided manner and are edited in a way that seems purely designed to shock the middle class and further the careers of the film makers. I was more horrified that the filmmakers had the audacity to cash in on these kids than I was by the events themselves. Schlock documentary making at its worst.

All the marks I can give this are purely because I believe the schlock angle may scare some of the mediocre set to act on child poverty.