Mercy Mercy - A Portrait of a True Adoption (2012)
A movie about an adoption going wrong
This text might contain Spoilers, so be aware!
The movie starts off with these two children living with their mom and dad in Ethiopia. They are two happy kids, they get lots of love and affection from their parents, siblings and relatives. The parents both have HIV and they're very worried about who'll take care of their children once they die. But they do love their children very much, so much that they, when approached by an adoption agency, a danish one, decide that for the best of the children, they will adopt/give away their two youngest kids to give them a better future.
Before the adoption they go down to Adis Ababa as a family and they're trying to be as careful as possible in order not to worry the kids. But there is a lot of anxiety from both the father and mother, and eventually they say that they have some demands on the new "parents" from Denmark. They want to feel part of the children's lives even after the move, and they want phone-calls and letters first often but later yearly.
So, next thing, two danish people, the happy couple who finally get to adopt some children, travel to Ethiopia, a country they apparently have no idea on what it is like... they have not been interested in learning any of the language spoken there, so their communication is done solely by an interpreter. When meeting the children, Roba (boy 2 years old) and Masho (girl four years old) they seem to have an idea that the children are "taking to them" right away, because both children give them hugs and even kisses. (The children are in their own environment by this point and feel safe and secure, even if they've been told to hug and kiss their new parents, something which is something there is no way these two kids understand)
They (The two Danes) meet the birth-parents and are quite reluctant on knowing anything about them, or how their lives have been/are like. It's a short dinner to the surprise of the birth-parents. At this point, the Danish couple promise over everything else, that they will always take care of the children. Always. (Watch out what you promise eh!) And then, after a few days of visits in the orphanage they remove the children from it and take them to their hotel-room.
Already then, in their room, they have a big problem. The girl, Masho, who is about 4 years old at the time, throws tantrums. She is crying out for her mother, but as the couple doesn't know Amharic they obviously doesn't understand what the girl is on about. They think that she is disobedient, probably because she never had felt love before, and they are worried that the child doesn't want to connect with them, as her new parents. (this is the FIRST day of having the new children. Do they think that the children are some sort of robots who should only feel gratitude to their saviors?) They later on, back in Denmark, talk to a psychologist who completely dismiss Masho's past, with that she probably never got any attention or love from her birth- parents which is the reason to her not connecting with these two people. And this, as we could see, was quite the opposite of the truth.
The movie moves on showing the new parents as completely ignorant people, who have no clue in how to handle a child with big problems on having been split from her birth-parents.
Meanwhile, the birth-parents are getting better medications and are healthier and have been able to get back to working. They are constantly begging for information on their two children. They don't get the letters that the adoption-parents have sent to the danish adoption agency. The new parents have refused to give the birth- parents any information on where they live/address or phone-numbers to call. The birth-parents can not stop thinking about their children, who they miss and are worried about. After four long years, they finally get the letters from the first year, and they are being told about Masho's disobedient nature, and that the parents never connect with her, that she acts out etc. It's very hard for the birth-parents to hear this, without being able to do anything about it. They want to take it to the authorities, but are being chastised for this by the adoption agencies and orphanage. They should not cry or long for their children anymore, is what they're told.
So, what happens? The parents in Denmark believes that there is something wrong with Masho. They decide that they can't /wont keep her, and they send her off to a children-home in Denmark.
