The 2008 documentary, Dear Zachary, has a strange power over me. Certainly, its subject — an unhinged woman kills a man, gives birth to his baby, flees to Canada where the child’s grandparents fight for his custody, and then she kills herself and the baby — is terribly tragic. It haunts me still. And so […]

The babies are coming! The babies are coming! In a stroke of French-inspired genius, there’s a new documentary coming to our shores May 7 (over Mother’s Day weekend ): it’s called Babies. If distributor Focus Features is lucky, the film will captivate audiences the same way March of the Penguins (also originally from France), Winged […]

Avijit Halder at 11 years old. Photo from Kids with Cameras. It makes sense to me to start off the “What Happened to the Subject?” series with a child who starred in a documentary, because it seems to me that we can see greater changes than with an adult subject. And, boy, has Avijit Halder, […]

I often get this conflicted feeling when I watch a documentary about children, like this week’s POV broadcast of Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go: I am immediately concerned that the subjects are being exploited in some way, since they’re not really able to decide for themselves whether or not they want to be involved […]