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Films/Videos Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues ​ 2022 What is being called the “definitive documentary” about the life of Louis Armstrong was directed by Sacha Jenkins and released in October 2022. The documentary, called Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues, uses rich archival material to tell the story of the legendary jazz trumpeter - his childhood, rise to fame, constant encounters with racism, pioneering of improv…There’s also the story of how Armstrong invented scat singing. Louis Armstrong might well have been seen by many as a “subservient Uncle Tom figure” during the Civil Rights movement, but that’s not the man Jenkins shows. Instead, Louis Armstrong is presented as a courageous man negotiating a tight rope between the mainstream white community and the Black community he came from. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Where the Crawdads Sing (novel) Delia Owens 2018 For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life--until the unthinkable happens. Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps. External Website

Films/Videos Fugitive Pieces ​ 2007 Fugitive Pieces is based on the 1996 award winning novel by Canadian writer, Anne Michaels (b. 1958). The film tells the story of Jakob who is 7 when he is orphaned in Poland during WWII. He hides in the forests and is rescued by a Greek archeologist who spirits him away to Greece and safety. Fugitive Pieces was produced by Robert Lantos and directed by Jeremy Podeswa. It premiered as the opening film for the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Too Much Lip Melissa Lucashenko 2018 A dark and funny new novel from the multi-award-winning author of Mullumbimby. One of the principal characters in Too Much Lip is a kinship carer for 2 children. The children, who had previously lived with their grandmother, would have been taken by the "Childstealers" if Michael Salter, aka Black Superman, hadn't stepped in. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The December Boys Michael Noonan 2007 When a group of close friends leaves the dusty outback orphanage where thy've grown up for a summer holiday together at the coast, their furture is full of possibilities. But the chance that one of them, just one, might gain a real family to live with calls everything they thought they knew about themselves and each other into question. Because the future is as unknown as the ocean's depths. And family comes in many forms... External Website

Films/Videos A Chance in the World ​ 2019 A Chance in the World is based on the true story of Steve Pemberton.Taken from his mother at age three, Steve Klakowicz lives in the clutches of a cruel foster family. He finds his only refuge in a box of books given to him by a kind stranger, books that take him to new worlds he can only imagine. He begins to hope that one day he might have a different life. As he grows, Steve is determined to unravel the mystery of his origins. A light-skinned boy with blue eyes, a curly Afro, and a Polish last name, he embarks on an extraordinary quest for his identity, armed with only one clue. Yet nothing is as it appears. External Website

Films/Videos Christmas Oranges ​ 2012 A girl is suddenly forced to leave her happy orphanage home and move to a harsh institution, where the headmaster takes an instant dislike to her. She keeps her spirits up looking forward to a traditional Christmas treat, & when the holiday arrives, something unexpected happens. External Website

Films/Videos Land Without God ​ 2019 Mannix Flynn (b. 1957) is an Irish writer, playwright and former politician who was institutionalised as a child. In 2019, Flynn released a documentary - Land Without God - in which he meets with generations of his family who have had their own harrowing experiences in both religious and state run institutions. As Tara Brady of the Irish Times comments in her review of Land Without God (18 October 2019), "the family's low socio-economic status was a huge factor in their victimisation by church and state". https://www.landwithoutgod.com/ External Website

Films/Videos Black and in Care Video 1984 ​ 2020 First ever compilation of views and experiences from black young people in care. BLACK and IN CARE deals with racism in the care system. It was pivotal in bringing the issue of race to the fore, led to the BIC Conference and a fundamental shift in Social Work practise. Produced, Directed by Sean Geoghegan copyright 3G20 Sean Geoghegan was a founding member and development Officer and Management Committee National Association of Young People In Care. He grew up in the care of Islington Council. Describes himself as a professional care experienced person. External Website

Films/Videos Orphan ​ 2009 Orphan is a 2009 psychological horror film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and written by David Leslie Johnson from a story by Alex Mace. The film stars Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabelle Fuhrman, C. C. H. Pounder and Jimmy Bennett. The plot centers on a couple who, after the death of their unborn child, adopt a mysterious nine-year-old Russian orphan. External Website

Films/Videos Enola Holmes ​ 2020 16 year old Enola Holmes is left in the kinship care of her oldest brother, Mycroft, when her mother disappears. Enola travels to London in search of her mother, resisting attempts by Mycroft to have her sent to a finishing school. At the conclusion to the film, Enola decides to follow in the footsteps of her famous brother, Sherlock, and become a detective. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Truth Peter Temple 2010 Inspector Stephen Villani, who was with his brothers in kinship for a while as a child, is head of homicide in Melbourne, Australia. He has a full agenda: a murdered woman in a penthouse apartment, three men butchered in a sadistic rampage, a tattoofaced drug dealer corrupting his rebellious daughter, a crumbling marriage. With each twist and every turn of this taut crime novel, Villani is forced to question whom he can trust. External Website

Films/Videos Mighty Aphrodite ​ 1995 Lenny and Amanda adopt a boy they call Max. Lenny becomes obsessed with searching for Max's biological mother and is disturbed to discover she is a sex worker called Linda. External Website

Films/Videos Matilda The Musical ​ 2022 Matilda the Musical (2022) is an adaption of the 2011 stage musical (which was an adaptation of the 1988 novel Matilda by Roald Dahl). During the film, Matilda (Alisha Weir) tells a story (to librarian Mrs Phelps) of a escapologist and acrobat who have a child. When the acrobat dies, the child is left with the acrobat's stepsister who treats her cruelly. Matilda later learns that the escapologist and acrobat were Miss Honey's (Lashana Lynch) parents, and the stepsister is the brutal Miss Trunchbull (Emma Thompson). After Trunchbull is banished from Crunchem Hall, Matilda moves in with Miss Honey and the school is renamed The Big Friendly School External Website

Films/Videos James Bond Series ​ ​ The James Bond Series of films are based on a fictional character, James Bond, character by Ian Fleming. Fleming featured Bond in 12 novels and 2 short story collections. After Fleming died in 1964 other writers have authored Bond-inspired novels. James Bond or 007 has been adapted for a range of other media including video games and a comic strip. The films are famous for their music and the gadgets Bond uses. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Twins Tessa de Loo 2001 Tessa de Loo is the pen name of the Dutch novelist and short story writer Johanna Martina (Tineke) Duyvené de Wit. Twins Lotte and Anna who were seperated as young children, are at last reunited. Neither lost hope to see each other again. However, with Europe on the verge of war, much has changed between them. While Lotte has enjoyed a privileged upbringing in liberal Holland, Anna has endured a life of poverty in a Germany under the spell of Hitler. With Lotte now engaged to a Jewish musician, and Anna brainwashed by Third Reich ideas, cracks in their relationship soon appear. With the war on, the twins decide to part again. Back in Germany, Anna marries Martin, an Austrian soldier, who hates the war but joins the SS for the sake of his wife only to be killed a few days later. Anna is devastated and longs for her sister. At the same time, Lotte's own life is in danger. The Nazis have invaded Holland and her lover has been taken to Auschwitz. Knowing she will never see him again, all she can do is keep his family safe from Hitler's troops. Now an old woman, Lotte remembers the pain as, before her, stands the sister she disowned all those years ago. Can these two lives ever be reconciled? The twins now face their final test . . . External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Lying Beside You Michael Robotham (2022) 2022 Michael Robotham 4 Lying Beside You (2022) is the 3rd in the Michael Robotham Cyrus Haven series. Cyrus Haven is a forensic psychologist who was in kinship care with his grandparents after his older brother murdered his parents and twin sisters. In Good Girl, Bad Girl (2019) he is introduced to Evie Cormac who has been in foster care and is now living in a youth detention centre. The sequel, When She Was Good (2020), included a Care Experienced characters who runs a paedophile ring and another is an enabler who transports children from paedophile to paedophile. With Lying Beside You there are a range of dodgy characters (including a cop and a forensic scientist) in addition to a vengeful serial kidnapper, none of whom have been in informal care or the formal care system. Evie, now living in Cyrus' home, helps to solve the crime. External Website

Films/Videos Farming ​ 2019 Farming is a 2018 British film written and directed by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, based on his own childhood. The plot is about a child whose Yorubá parents give him to a white working-class family in London in the 1960s, and who grows up to join a white skinhead gang led by a white supremacist. External Website

Films/Videos Sharper ​ 2023 Sharper (2023) is an American thriller about a couple of fraudsters conning the super-rich. The story is told through a series of character vignettes. The movie begins with Tom (Justice Smith), a bookshop owner who is drawn to a customer Sandra (Briana Middleton) when they begin talking about her PhD project on black feminists. Sandra tells Tom that she was in foster care as a child. We find out later that Sandra or Sandy is on parole and has a long criminal history. And we know she had a difficult childhood. However, the foster care story is never confirmed. External Website

Films/Videos A Thousand and One ​ 2023 A Thousand and One is a 2023 American drama film written and directed by A.V. Rockwell in her feature directorial debut. The film stars Teyana Taylor, Will Catlett, Josiah Cross, Aven Courtney, and Aaron Kingsley Adetola. Set in the 1990s and 2000s, it follows a single mother, convicted thief, Inez de la Paz who returns to the Brooklyn neighborhood of her former shelter, where she sees her son, Terry, with other children from his foster home out on the street. When Terry is hospitalized after trying to escape from the home, Inez secretly visits him. He tells her about his earliest memory: of Inez abandoning him on a street corner when he was two years old - triggering Inez’s own memories of a childhood in the care system. She decides to kidnap her son out of the foster care system to raise him herself, as the two struggle with life in a constantly changing New York City. It had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2023, and won the Grand Jury Prize. External Website