It’s not just children whom Marion Cloete and her family are rescuing in the de facto orphanage and school they’ve set up in rural South Africa, but childhood itself for these pint-sized refugees, from rape, child prostitution, hunger, and—above all—an AIDS epidemic that’s killing by the hundreds of thousands. A big, jolly, boundlessly energetic former Commie activist from the apartheid era who walked out on a life of luxury in Johannesburg to do good, Cloete has carved out a shelter for the children. She’s a licensed therapist who understands the value of a sympathetic ear, but also an advocate who trusts her charges enough that she can refract their grim reality back to them as hope, action, and self-care. Director Louise Hogarth (whose... More >>>