In today’s Ethiopia of 85 million citizens, thousands of children end up in orphanages each year, relinquished by parents who are unable to raise them or found abandoned by the police even a few days after they are born. These institutions offer them shelter and education until they are adopted, usually by foster parents from abroad. The film records daily life behind the closed gates of one of these orphanages, in which a hard-working staff of nannies, nurses and volunteers takes care of about fifty children aged from a few months to 12 years. Filmed in its entirety as cinéma-vérité, based on direct observation, it explores the complex fabric of the diverse, transient community that lives isolated in this home away from home.
