A moving documentary that becomes a heart-breaking group counselling session, White Nanny, Black Child is a film that shows those who have gone through trauma are not alone. 80 minutes simply isn’t enough to cover each of their stories.
Between 1955 and 1995, over 70,000 West African children were fostered by white Britons in a practice known as ‘farming’. Many individuals then had to live, often in silence, with the long-lasting impact of this controversial official policy. Nine raised this way were invited to a workshop retreat under professional guidance to discuss their experiences. Each takes turns delving into their past, revealing the confusion and trauma of dealing with such change at a young age.
You have little control over things in your life as a child, and nothing more conveys that than finding out what happened for over 40 years in Britain with African children. In some cases, children are passed back and forth as if they are a watch someone has taken a loan of. There is an almost insurmountable amount of trauma of being removed from the care of your own parents, and the trauma that resides within a person is shown here clear as day in White Nanny, Black Child.
We have a group of people who are almost lost, still some 50 or so years later, still trying to reconcile with what happened to them and how to recover from it. The most poetic aspect of White Nanny, Black Child, isn’t what we as an audience get to understand or that the trauma is getting the fullest of reveals to the world. In fact, these groups of people have others to whom they can now relate. They are in a very small group remaining, and for them to have that connection with another person, who has the closest possible realisation of what they have gone through, is so rewarding. We see it on camera, the light turning on about their heads as they realise there is someone they can maybe lean on a little.
The strongest links are formed by giving these men and women an outlet to release their emotions, pain, and frustrations. Showing us the integral nature of a strong support structure, we can live in hope that, finally, they will find some form of solace in what they have experienced. Support in and of itself is powerful, and just knowing you are not alone can do some people utter wonders.
At times, White Nanny, Black Child feels as if we have been caught listening in on the deepest of therapy sessions. Intruding on something that was meant to stay with that group, such is how personal their stories are. There is so much pain within this group that your heart truly pains for them. This rawness always follows the documentary, and while it feels like we shouldn’t be listening in to these moments. You are wholly thankful that you are; we are learning of the failures of the past; we need films like this to help fill those gaps in our understanding of the trauma that those around us experienced.
Andy Mundy-Castle does so much great work here in his documentary that you would willingly sit and listen to the full stories of each participant while also wanting to hear everything from those families who gave up their children and those who took the children in. We have snippets from them here and there, but Mundy-Castle has us so invested in this story that we want to learn absolutely everything we can. Which is really the biggest compliment you can give his film. It finishes, but our journey with the story doesn’t.
★★★ 1/2
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