CASA for Children, Inc.

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CASA FOR CHILDREN MOVIE LIST

Abuse

	A Mother's Love (Cancer Hoax Documentary) Tells the inside story of a mother, Terri Milbrandt, who pretended her daughter had cancer and appealed to her close-knit community for help to pay the medical bills.
	Buck A richly textured and visually stunning film follows Brannaman from his abusive childhood to his phenomenally successful approach to horses. A real-life "horse-whisperer", he eschews the violence of his upbringing and teaches people to communicate with their horses through leadership and sensitivity, not punishment.
	The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez A boy's brutal murder and the public trials of his guardians and social workers prompt questions about the system's protection of vulnerable children. Six-part docuseries on Netflix.

Addiction

First Circle, Movie Poster, Young Kids, Country Side, Green Trees, Foster Care

First Circle
A revealing documentary about Foster Care, family, and healing in the Western United States. This film was filmed over a five-year period in Idaho and Oregon and follows families struggling to heal, administrators working for change and the isolation of a western landscape responsible for both the manufacturing of and liberation from meth addiction.

The Pharmacist, Movie Poster, Netflix, Pill, Breaking, People Shadows

The Pharmacist
After losing his son in a drug-related shooting, small-town pharmacist Dan Schneider embarks on a crusade to bring a reckoning against the powerful figures behind the nation's devastating opioid epidemic. 4-part Netflix Docuseries.

Losing Isaiah. Movie Poster. Jessica Lange. Halle Berry. Young Boy. Mother. Closeup.

Losing Isaiah
Newborn Isaiah is found in a dumpster with cocaine in his system. Three years later, a bitter custody battle develops between the fmaily who has adopted and raised him and the mother who has gone through rehab and says she never intended to give him up.

Adoption/Foster Care

	Struggle for Identity: Issues in Transracial Adoption A thought-provoking 20-minute video presenting a group of adoptees who discuss their experiences growing up in transracial adoptive families. They delve into complex issues such as confronting stereotypes, fitting in with their culture of origin, and learning to define themselves in terms of race and culture.
	The Blind Side The story of Michael Oher, a homeless and traumatized boy who became an All American football payer and first-round NFL draft pick with the help of a caring woman and her family.
	Martian Child Wanting to experience fatherhood, a man adopts a youngster who has an unusual crisis of identity, believing he is from Mars, and trouble arises when the man, who devotes himself to his strange son, begins to believe that the boy is indeed an alien.
	Unlocking the Heart of Adoption This film bridges the gap between birth ad adoptive families through diverse personal stories of adoptees, birthparents, and adoptive parents in same race and transracial adoptions interwoven with the filmmaker's story as a birthmother revealing the enormous complexities in their lives with fascinating historical background.
	Gimme Shelter Based on an inspiring true story. Pregnant teenager Apple runs from her abusive mother and attempts to find her father. After a horrific encounter with a pimp, Apple ends up in hospital and is sent to a shelter for pregnant teens that offers hope and redemption for its guests.
	Camp To impress a potential client, financial advisor Ken Matthews signs up to be a counselor at a camp for kids in the foster system. Based on the true stories of real-life campers at Royal Family Kids summer camp, audiences will be inspired and find hope in the midst of the most difficult circumstances.
	Short Term 12 Calm and competent, Grace is a young counselor at a California care unit for at-risk teens. However, her cool facade begins to crack in the pressure cooker atmosphere as she and some of the unruly residents are reminded of past and present abuses.
	Like Dandelion Dust A drama that explores the different meanings of being a parent through the gritty, realistic lives of the struggling, blue-collar Porters, and the privileged Campbell family. Their lives intersect, intertwine, and collide, all for the love of a little boy.
	Instant Family When Pete and Ellie decide to start a family, they stumble into the world of foster care adoption. They hope to take in one small child, but when they meet three siblings, including a rebellious 15-year-old girl, they find themselves speeding from zero to three kids overnight. Now, Pete and Ellie must try to learn the ropes of instant parenthood in the hope of becoming a family.
	Ordinary Miracles A troubled teen is scooped up by a tough San Diego judge whose conscience causes her to bring the girl home with her to live. Together they face insecurities and personal problems to forge a special bond.
	White Oleander Powerfully acted adaptation of Janet Fitch's best-selling novel. With her mother serving a life sentence for murdering her boyfriend, a teenage girl enters the foster care system. As she moves from one troubled foster home to another, each with its own rules and lessons to be learned, she begins a journey of self discovery. Trying to forge her own identity proves difficult under the cold-hearted influence of her mother.

Child Welfare

	Foster Drawing on unprecedented access, FOSTER explores the often-misunderstood world of foster care through compelling stories from the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, the largest county child welfare agency in the country. The documentary mixes firsthand accounts of people navigating the system with insights from social workers, advocates and others, offering a realistic but hopeful perspective on a community that needs society’s support.
	America A biracial 17-year old boy named America, who has experienced a difficult life of foster care and sexual abuse, undergoes counseling to help him come to terms with his painful past of childhood trauma, including growing up with (ad abandoned by) a crack-addicted mother and being shuffled through a series of foster homes.
	Gracie's Choice Inspired by a true story. Gracie is a 17 year-old with four siblings from different fathers and a mother that is utterly incapable of taking care of the kids. When it looks as if the kids will be scattered to the wind, Gracie overcomes enormous obstacles to adopt her younger siblings and keep the family together.
	Know How Know How captures the reality of life in foster care from the point of view of those living in it. It's not a documentary nor is it fiction. It's a hybrid approach for using film to create social change. Instead of professional screenwriters and actors, these true stories are written and performed by a cast of ordinary foster care youth, and their performances are powerful, moving, and eye-opening.

Cultural Awareness

	Closure A documentary about a transracial adoptee who finds her birth mother and meets the rest of a family who didn't know she existed, including her birth father. A story about identity, the complexities of transracial adoption, and most importantly, CLOSURE.
	Freedom Writers A dedicated teacher (Hilary Swank) in a racially divided Los Angeles school has a class of at-risk teenagers deemed incapable of learning. Instead of giving up, she inspires her students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.
	Off and Running Off and Running tells the story of Brooklyn teenager Avery, a track star with a bright future. She is the adopted African-American child of white Jewish lesbians. Her older brother is black and Puerto Rican and her younger brother is Korean. Though it may not look typical, Avery’s household is like most American homes — until Avery writes to her birth mother and the response throws her into crisis.
	Foster Care's Invisible Youth Seven LGBTQ youth from the foster care system share their stories. Failed by their families, these young people go on to face rejection from foster families, invisibility within the system, and incredible obstacles to healthy development.
	Any Day Now In the 1970s, a gay couple fights a biased legal system to keep custody of a teenager with Down Syndrome who has been abandoned by his mother.

Domestic Violence

	Dear Zachary: A letter to a Son About His Father On November 5, 2001, Dr. Andrew Bagby was murdered in a parking lot in Western Pennsylvania; the prime suspect, his ex-girlfriend Dr. Shirley Turner, promptly fled the United States for St. John's Canada, where she announced that she was pregnant with Andrew's child. She named the little boy Zachary. Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne, Andrew's oldest friend, began making a film for little Zachary as a way for him to get to know the father he'd never meet. But when Shirley Turner was released on bail in Canada and was given custody of Zachary while awaiting extradition to the U.S., the film's focus shifted to Zahary's grandparents', David and Kathleen Bagby, and their desperate efforts to win custody of the boy from the woman they knew had murdered their son.
	Hidden in Plain Sight A woman stages her own suicide but still lives in fear of her abusive ex-boyfriend tracking her down and stealing the son he never knew he had. Netflix movie.
	Impact of Domestic Violence on Children Research shows the impacts of Domestic Violence on Children can last a lifetime. Children exposed to violence in the home often experience psychosomatic illnesses, depression, and suicidal tendencies. Later in life, these children are at greater risk for substance abuse, teen pregnancy, and criminal behavior than those raised in homes without violence.
	Radio Flyer When their parents divorce, brothers Mike and Bobby move to a California suburb with their mother, Mary. Soon after, she remarries a man who insists on being called "the King" and who beats young Bobby when Mary isn't around. The boys try to escape their harsh home life through fantasy, most of it centered on their Radio Flyer wagon. Inspired by the legend of another neighborhood boy, they hope to make it fly.

Human Trafficking/Sexual Abuse

	I am Jane Doe An intense documentary that follows real cases of American girls enslaved in the child sex trade through ads in the newspaper's online classified section. The families fight to shut down backpage.com. Netflix documentary.
	Selling the Girl Next Door This documentary takes viewers into the world of underage American girls caught up in the violent sex trade. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, hundreds of thousands of girls under the age of 18 are ensnared into lives of prostitution annually. Many are runaways or "throwaways" trapped in "the oldest profession" by pimps who sell them using modern sales and marketing techniques.
	Leaving Neverland A two-part documentary exploring the separate but parallel experiences of two young boys, James Safechuck, at age 10, and Wade Robson, at age 7, both of whom were befriended by Michael Jackson. This film crafts a portrait of substantiated abuse, exploring the complicated feelings that led both men to confront their experiences after both had sons of their own.
	Kind Hearted Woman In a special two-part series, acclaimed filmmaker David Sutherland (The Farmer’s Wife, Country Boys) creates an unforgettable portrait of Robin Charboneau, a 32-year-old divorced single mother and Oglala Sioux woman living on North Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation. Sutherland follows Robin over three years as she struggles to raise her two children, further her education, and heal herself from the wounds of sexual abuse she suffered as a child.
	Sexy, Inc. Bissonnette's documentary analyzes the hypersexualization of our environment and its noxious effects on young people. Psychologists, teachers, and school nurses criticize the unhealthy culture surrounding our children, where marketing and advertising are targeting younger and younger audiences and bombarding them with sexual and sexist images. Sexy Inc. suggests various ways of countering hypersexualization and the eroticization of childhood and invites us to rally against this worrying phenomenon.
	Abducted in Plain Sight In this true-crime documentary, a family falls prey to the manipulative charm of a neighbor, who abducts their adolescent daughter. Twice. Netflix documentary.
	Very Young Girls Very Young Girls is an expose of human trafficking that follows 13 and 14-year-old American girls as they are seduced, abused, and sold on New York's streets by pimps, and treated as adult criminals by police. The film follows the barely-adolescent girls in real-time, using verite and intimate interviews with them as they are first lured on the streets and the dire events that follow.

Homelessness

Homeless, Motel Kids, Orange County, Movie Poster, HBO, Dumpster, Kids

Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County
explores the world of children who reside in discounted motels within walking distance of Disneyland, living in limbo as their families struggle to survive in one of the wealthiest regions of America. The parents of motel kids are often hard workers who don't earn enough to own or rent homes. As a result, they continue to live week-to-week in motels, hoping against hope for an opportunity that might allow them to move up in the O.C.

Mental Illness

I am Sam. Movie Poster. Sean Penn. Michelle Pfeiffer. CloseUp.

I Am Sam
A mentally retarded man fights for custody of his 7 year-old daughter, and in the process teaches his cold-hearted lawyer the value of love and family.

Protest, Psychiatry Poster, Education's Ruin, Medicating Kids, Movie Poster

Medicating Kids
Today, millions of American children are being prescribed powerful behavior modifying drugs such as Ritalin, Prozac, Adderall. But are these medications really necessary-and safe-for young children or merely a harried nation’s quick fix for annoying, yet age-appropriate, behavior? FRONTLINE investigates the rapidly growing use of psychoactive drugs by children and the challenges of parenting and schooling in a world of high stress and increasing family disintegration.

Trauma

	Paper Tigers Paper Tigers follows a year in the life of a high school that has radically changed its approach to disciplining its students, becoming a model for how to break the cycles of poverty, violence, and disease that affects families.
	Broken Places Explores why some children are severely damaged by early adversity while others are able to thrive. By revisiting some of the abused and neglected children we profiled decades ago, we're able to dramatically illustrate how early trauma shaped their lives as adults. Broken Places interweaves these longitudinal narratives with commentary from a few nationally renowned experts to help viewers better understand the devastating impact of childhood adversity as well as the inspiring characteristics of resilience.
	Healing Neen for 19 nightmarish years, she lived on the streets, racking up 66 criminal convictions, until finally treatment for her trauma offered her a way out and up. Healing Neen points to the consequences of untreated trauma to individuals and society-at-large, including mental health problems, addiction, homelessness, and incarceration.
	Antwone Fisher Antwone Fisher, a young navy man, is forced to see a psychiatrist after a violent outburst against a fellow crewman. During the course of treatment, a painful past is revealed and a new hope begins.

Movies for Kids

	Annie (1982) An orphan in a facility run by the mean Miss Hannigan, Annie believes that her parents left her there by mistake. When a rich man named Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks decides to let an orphan live at his home to promote his image, Annie is selected. While Annie gets accustomed to living in Warbucks' mansion, she still longs to meet her parents. So Warbucks announces a search for them and a reward, which brings out many frauds.
	Annie (2014) Ever since her parents left her as a baby, little Annie has led a hard-knock life with her calculating foster mother, Miss Hannigan. However, all that changes when hard-nosed billionaire and mayoral candidate Will Stacks takes her in on the recommendation of his advisers. Stacks believes that he's Annie's guardian angel, but the plucky youngster's confidence and sunny outlook may mean that Annie will save Will instead.
	Hotel for Dogs After moving into a foster home that forbids pets, siblings Andi and Bruce must quickly find a home for their dog, Friday. The resourceful pair find an abandoned hotel, and with the help of Bruce's mechanical skills, turn it into a pooch paradise for Friday and a number of strays. But when the inevitable barking makes neighbors suspicious, Andi and Bruce must find a way to hide their canine haven from prying eyes.
	Meet the Robinsons Boy genius Lewis gives up hope of retrieving his latest invention, which was stolen by Bowler Hat Guy, then a young time-traveler named Wilbur Robinson arrives on the scene to whisk Lewis away in his time machine. The boys spend a day in the future with Wilbur's eccentric family and uncover an amazing secret at the same time.
	Despicable Me A man who delights in all things wicked, supervillain Gru hatches a plan to steal the moon. Surrounded by an army of little yellow minions and his impenetrable arsenal of weapons and war machines, Gru makes ready to vanquish all who stand in his way. But nothing in his calculations and groundwork has prepared him for his greatest challenge: three adorable orphan girls who want to make him their dad.