Family Portrait in Black and White

Genre: Documentary
Director: Julia Ivanova
Rate: ***

Set in a dilapidated Ukranian town still reeling from the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Julia Ivanova’s Family Portrait in Black and White is a subtle political documentary.

Its portrait of Olga Nenya, a Ukranian woman who has adopted  dozens of foster children (many of them black) to complement her biological offspring, is also a vivid portrait of generosity shading over into authoritarianism;     Olga’s benevolent impulses toward her extended family are compromised by her need – linked to her country’s own history – to control their every move.