'Be it images of a boy leaping from one top bunk to another, or of girls leaning their heads on each other’s shoulders, 'A House Made of Splinters' locates poignant poetry in this hardscrabble milieu, if little lasting optimism,' writes nschager
The film situates itself in a residential center for children whose parents can no longer care for them. In the individual cases detailed by director Simon Lereng Wilmont, alcoholism is the primary reason these kids’ mothers and fathers can’t fulfill their duties.
Sasha was left alone in her home for days on end to fend for herself while her mom embarked on the latest in a long line of benders. Delinquent Kolya also has a mom who’s rarely sober, thus relegating him and his two younger siblings to the center, where Kolya has become a bitterly angry, defiant kid who scrawls hostile things on his arm, steals money, and shrugs off the police’s warnings about the path-to-prison he’s charting.
Director Lereng Wilmont sticks closely to his subjects in this overcrowded building, where grade-schoolers sleep in bunk beds, eat at long tables, and cavort in hallways, running about and performing TikTok dances to rapt-with-attention toddler audiences. One of the women who manages this establishment delivers somewhat unnecessary narration that merely articulates truths that are plain for all to see.
Abandonment is an ever-present threat and weighs heavily on their minds as they navigate this limbo, caught between unfit parents they both love and fear, a makeshift center that’s akin to a waystation, and strange and frightening new foster destinations.
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