All God's Children

Pavalas (Emergian Cazac), a nine-year-old boy, sits alone in a park, writing in a notebook, “One missing mother…blue…eyes.” He sticks his note in the fork of a tree. His mother, Irina (Ina Surdu), left him three years earlier and has not returned. He’s living in an orphanage, thinking only about the day they will be reunited.

Alina (Aliona Turcanu), who has lost her own son in a car accident and has traveled to Moldova to adopt, is taken with Pavalas. She and her husband Peter (Michael Ironside) drive him to the orphanage with the promise to see him again.

But Irina, who had been forced into prostitution in Italy, does return, desperate to find Pavalas. She and her friend Tatiana (Rodica Oantsa) travel to Transnistria, a part of Moldova, hoping to find him there. They have many misadventures until her pimp Bruno (Paolo Seganti) finds them, determined to teach his “whore” Irina a lesson. He gives her three days to return the money he had “invested” in her – or sell him her child. It’s “the money or the boy.” Bruno isn’t just a pimp. He has good connections among human traffickers too.

Irina is terrified. She must fight this man any way she can, dealing with a corrupt local police and an Interpol officer trying to shut down the prostitution ring. Mother and son are finally reunited, but it is a bittersweet moment, for the future is rarely what you hope for.

Though All God’s Children is a work of fiction the film is dedicated to all the women and children who have been the victims of human trafficking.

ALL GOD’S CHILDREN is the first film Moldova has submitted for Academy Award consideration.