Controversial conceptual artist Vanessa Beecroft, known for staging striking tableaux of nude female models, is smitten with a pair of Sudanese twins during an African photo shoot. Determined to adopt them whether her husband, the local orphanage, or the government of Sudan likes it or not, she returns to this captivating environment. Cameras rolling, award-winning documentarian Piettra Brettkelly follows Beecroft over a difficult 16-month fight to become the first foreigner in history to legally take children out of this impoverished and beleaguered country. The candid moments that arise reveal a talented artist at her best and worst, and shed light on the inflammatory subject of international adoption.
This timely documentary fascinates and frustrates.
-Hollywood.com
"I quickly felt I was in the hands of a master storyteller."
- Still in Motion
"A brutally honest, remarkably self-critical reflection on foreign adoption that touches unexpectedly on issues of alienation and loneliness.
-Carino Chocano, LA Times
"Pietra Brettkellys engimatic rendering is not a straightforward artists profile, political commentary or domestic drama, but a poetic fusion of the three."
-Peter Debruge, Variety
"Writer director Pietra Brettkellys expertly architected melodrama allows the details of this complex story of Western perceptions of the third world, acts of questionable respect in the name of art-making and a critique of an artist as a human being, to unfold at the right moments."