Family Portrait In Black And White

Family Portrait in Black and White follows passionate supermom, Olga Nenya during three turbulent years that see her brood of 17 foster children grow into adolescence. Olga is a loving single mother who receives little government assistance but she is no Mother Teresa. Raised by the Soviet regime, she believes in communal responsibility over individual freedom and runs the family with Stalin-like authority. Unlike many in the Ukraine, Olga holds no racial prejudices as 16 of her foster children are bi-racial, results of taboo relationships between local Ukrainian girls and African students. Olga's parental limits are tested daily and her iron-fisted ways become a refuge for some and prison for the others. 'When the kids grow up, at least they will have a mother to blame for all the failures that will happen in their lives'. In many ways, Olga's words sum up the immense value of living with a Mother, ideal or not, biological or adoptive, versus being raised in the best orphanage where a child calls every caregiver 'a mom' without ever knowing what a true MOTHER is.

Olga Nenya is a single Ukrainian woman raising 20 foster children on her own. Despite the poverty and racism surrounding her, she is determined to raise the children, many of whom are biracial, with love and a sense of safety and responsibility. Olga believes in strength in numbers and counts on the children to support and protect each other out in the community. But while all the children are grateful to have a home, some of them struggle with what they see as a dictatorship, and the viewer is forced to ask if Olga s mothering is purely altruistic or bordering on obsessive.

Trailer for the documentary Family Portrait in Black and White. Olga has 27 children. Four of them, now adults, are her biological children; for the other 23 she has been an adoptive or foster mother for as long as they can remember. Of those twenty three, sixteen are bi-racial. She calls them my chocolates , and raises them to be patriotic Ukrainians. Some residents of Sumy, Ukraine, consider Olga a saint - but many believe she is just crazy. Inherited from the Soviet era, there is a stigma in the country against interracial relationships, and against children born as consequences' of such romantic encounters between Ukrainian girls and students from Africa, who come to Ukraine to study. The destiny of hundreds of bi-racial children is tragic - unwanted and doomed to grow up as orphans. Hence, for over a decade, Olga has been literally picking up the black babies left in Ukrainian orphanages. This was Olga s idea to raise many mixed-race children together so that they could support and protect one another.

Footage from the question and answer session for Family Portrait in Black and White at the 2011 LA Film Festival.