Australian documentarian Genevieve Bailey found herself dispirited working for a newspaper as a college student, reading bad news day after day. She worried especially about how that bad news would translate for children today, which is why she set out to 15 countries over six years to see how they lived and what their joys, concerns, and feelings were.
The result is I Am Eleven, a award-winning, life-affirming documentary about having the future — and adolescence — just ahead. Among Bailey’s subjects are Oliver, a forthright American boy who confesses, “I’m gonna be the tree for Christmas because we’re, like, messed up financially,” and Jack from Thailand, who declares, “It really doesn’t matter which religion you’re from — they all have the same meaning in the end.”
I Am Eleven will open September 12 in New York and September 19 in Los Angeles.
