Movie Review : Oranges & Sunshine

I safely arrived back in Rado on Tuesday morning, after spending about 30 hours flying from Adelaide via Sydney, Singapore and then Zurich.  Lots of time for watching movies on planes, quite a luxury for me as there is no movie theatre in our town, and the closest theatre that plays movies in English (once a month only) is an hours drive away - hence we don't go to the movies anymore.


I flicked through Singapore Airlines entertainment guide and saw "Oranges & Sunshine", a movie I'd seen very well reviewed in the UK earlier this year.


Here's the synopsis:-

Oranges and Sunshine tells the story of Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham, who uncovered one of the most significant social scandals in recent times: the forced migration of children from the United Kingdom. Almost singlehandedly, against overwhelming odds and with little regard for her own well-being, Margaret reunited thousands of families, brought authorities to account and worldwide attention to an extraordinary miscarriage of justice. She discovered a secret that the British government had kept hidden for years: one hundred and thirty thousand children in care had been sent abroad to commonwealth countries, mainly Australia. Children as young as four had been told that their parents were dead, and been sent to children's homes on the other side of the world. Many were subjected to appalling abuse. They were promised oranges and sunshine, they got hard labour and life in institutions.

This is a factual and heart breaking movie.  Over 130,000 children, ranging from just 4 years old, were shipped to Australia (and other countries within the Commonwealth) where many of them were then subject to institutionalized slavery, terror and torture by the people who were meant to be caring for them, most notably at the well known Bindoon home.

It is a seriously good movie, sensitively told.  If you get the opportunity, take the time to learn more about this sad time.  This forced migration only ceased in the 1970's - yes, the 1970's.  That means that people my age, people your age, are still finding their way out of this nightmare.