The director of the child-focused THE SOUND OF MUMBAI trains her camera on a young Russian orphan struggling to fit into her new adoptive American family.
When the Wisconsinite Diaz family adopts Masha, an eleven-year-old raised in a Russian orphanage, they find a young girl much different from their own fourteen-year-old Cami. Faced with the challenge of establishing a bond with Masha – who has never encountered parental love before – as well as with their adopted five-year-old twins, they seek help in the form of a scientific program of therapy devised by one of the leaders in child attachment, developmental psychologist, Professor Robert Marvin, PhD. Filmmaker Sarah McCarthy follows them over a year as the family tries to learn to come together, supplementing this real-life application of Marvin’s principles with archival footage of past animal and human research around concepts of attachment and love, like Harry Harlow’s infamous soft mother/wire mother monkey experiments, to show, as the film’s tagline says, how “science can change the way you love.”
Just a week and a half remains in McCarthy’s Kickstarter campaign to cover music and archival costs for the film. With just under 50% of the £20,000 target reached, those interested should consider backing the project soon. To keep updated, check out the film’s website.
McCarthy’s MUMBAI was a smartly conceived and expertly realized project, so I’ve been curious to see what the director does next. She’s shown an ability to focus on child protagonists but maintain a discerning eye for her larger story rather than just feed an audience their supposed preciousness. Masha, in particular, seems like an appropriate, older-than-her-years new subject for McCarthy to explore a serious topic with measured doses of affecting family drama and somewhat detached scientific curiosity. While there have been other docs on trans-national and cross-cultural adoption, by foregrounding the Diaz’s story in science, McCarthy is poised to offer something quite different, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the family navigates their challenge.
what (not) to doc 