THE CHILDREN

by Joanna Lipper

I set out to make a film about children who confront serious issues with grace, dignity, wisdom, wonder and resilience—while somehow managing to maintain their integrity amidst the confusion, conflict and complexity of the adult world. After spending four years making a documentary and writing a book about six teenage mothers and their children (Growing Up Fast, Picador, 2003) I emerged with a sense of a milieu that could ground the contemporary world of the children in Little Fugitive. I had witnessed firsthand, the plights of young single mothers addressing the issue of their sons’ and daughters’ fathers being incarcerated. Shocked to find that nearly two million children in America have at least one parent behind bars, I decided that the mystery of the absent father in the original film would be replaced by the presence of Sam, the incarcerated father of the boys, played by Peter Dinklage.

In The True Cost of Prison, Eric Schlosser asserts that,

Children who grow up with a parent behind bars are far more likely than other kids to wind up in prison one day….  The failure of most inmates to rejoin society permanently, combined with the prospective failure of so many of their children, raises the specter of a growing, thriving criminal underclass in America. A prison sentence for one person may punish a family for generations.

In many ways my remake of Little Fugitive evolved into the story of two young boys who long to transcend this fate. 

< Previous 1 2 3