Family Portrait in Black and White Trailer (2011)

Trailer for the documentary Family Portrait in Black and White.

Olga has 27 children. Four of them, now adults, are her biological children; for the other 23 she has been an adoptive or foster mother for as long as they can remember. Of those twenty three, sixteen are bi-racial. She calls them “my chocolates”, and raises them to be patriotic Ukrainians. Some residents of Sumy, Ukraine, consider Olga a saint - but many believe she is just crazy. Inherited from the Soviet era, there is a stigma in the country against interracial relationships, and against children born as consequences" of such romantic encounters between Ukrainian girls and students from Africa, who come to Ukraine to study. The destiny of hundreds of bi-racial children is tragic - unwanted and doomed to grow up as orphans. Hence, for over a decade, Olga has been literally picking up the black babies left in Ukrainian orphanages. This was Olga’s idea – to raise many mixed-race children together so that they could support and protect one another.