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About the Film:
America’s Most Unwanted: Stories of Hope and Survival From Former Foster & Group Home Kids, is a feature-length professional video project that reveals tales of hope and survival told by former foster care and group home youth.

Children and adolescents who grow up in foster care or group homes often experience isolation and shame around not being part of a traditional family. In addition to these challenging emotional experiences, many people hold a negative view of foster care and group home kids. They are often assumed to be failures as they cross the threshold into adulthood. When foster youth make it through college, they are considered to be the unique and special ones. America’s Most Unwanted (AMU), will disprove the myth that foster care and group home kids are doomed for pity, and do not have a chance to be wanted and needed by society at large. It will provide a unique, refreshing and much-needed perspective on the resiliency many of these kids have as they overcome the odds slated against them. While unwanted as youth, many create spaces as adults where they work, love and thrive as productive members of society.

AMU’s main subject is Teruko Dobashi, a current foster youth who is graduating high school and beginning college at UC Berkeley in the fall. In footage and interviews of Teruko as she makes the journey into adulthood, and in interviews with former foster youth, such as award-winning author and meditation teacher, Queenie (Valerie) Mason-John, Media Artist Jackie Templeton, Oracle Architect Joseph Hui, and filmmaker Dominique De Guzman, as well as interviews with politicians working to improve conditions, such as Assemblyman Mark Leno, the film’s director, Shani Heckman—a former foster child herself—will capture vivid images and stories to create a film focusing on hope and survival.

Production for the film’s final feature will last a minimum of three years as we follow Teruko from high school to college. Due to the competitive nature of filmmaking and the longevity of this project, we will make a short film between 10 and 26 minutes to use in order to raise interest in the film. This will allow us to coordinate interviews across the states, generate funding, establish completion and distribution contracts, and tour the film festival circuit. With the support of a cable producer and a confirmed distributor, we will solicit completion funding for the final feature production.

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PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

“Three of 10 of the nation’s homeless are former foster children. A recent study has found that 12-18 months after leaving foster care: 27% of the males and 10% of the females had been incarcerated, 33% were receiving public assistance, 37% had not finished high school, and 50% were unemployed.” - Casey Family Programs National Center for Resource Family Support

The dismal statistics for foster youth are well known: Less than sixty percent graduate from high school and even less make it to college, let alone through college. More than half of California’s foster youth will end up homeless within two years of aging out of the foster care system. These statistics are easy to find—almost everyone feels bad for foster youth. But what about the other side of the story? What about the kids that do “make it”? Lesser known are the thousands of other foster kids that succeed: the ones that graduate from college, live healthy lives and created happy, healthy families of their own. These stories are less commonly heard, and are important to bring into the fold, not only so that foster youth have inspirational role models to guide them through their journeys, but also so others will know the vitality and ambition possible within these youth and give them a chance. AMU will fill this gap and provide positive images and role models of foster youth. It will expose the other side of growing up in the foster care system: the strength, courage, and endurance of its youth. Unlike other films on foster care youth that have focused on emancipation and sad stories, AMU will provide a uniquely positive perspective.

AMU will tell the story of hope and survival through four avenues: a youth currently in foster care who is graduating high school and going to college; formal interviews with past foster care and group home youth living successful lives, blended with historical and present day footage of these interviewees; animation of statistics and experiences; everyday life footage and interviews with politicians and other advocates for foster care and group home youth. B-roll options include historical footage of the various interview subjects with plans to include vintage and recent Super 8mm footage of the character’s lives. Blending these various types of footage of the interviewees, past and present, will allow viewers a chance to delve further into the subject’s history and life and ideally show how resilient former foster youth can be.

AMU will follow the journey of Teruko Dobashi, a 17-year-old foster youth, as she graduates from Jefferson High School in Daly City and begins college at UC Berkeley. Teruko’s story is inspiring: As a teenager, she fled a childhood with a drug-addicted and abusive mother to a life on the streets, and ended up in foster care. She didn’t let this stop her from succeeding, as she continued to excel in school, stayed active in her community and surprised everyone but herself. She applied to live in a transitional housing group home program for teenagers, and was accepted. There, she worked to support herself, stayed in school fulltime, and learned how to support herself. As a biracial, queer young woman, Teruko says, “the only disadvantage I will ever face is being under educated.” Teruko is a poet, performer and activist, and AMU will capture her in many aspects of her life as she takes on the next challenges facing her and enters young adulthood.

AMU will provide new role models for youth living in the foster care system by blending footage and interviews of Teruko with interviews with other current and former foster care and group home children, stories of success and well-being, and historic and recent footage of these characters. These characters reveal their formulas and methods for survival, talk about their journeys through and out of difficult and painful childhoods, and demonstrate their current capacities to live healthy and happy lives.

Because education is a running theme in foster youth success stories, blending footage of Teruko’s transition from high school to college with those who have succeeded before her will substantiate our claims that personal struggle inspires achievements. Teruko’s story will personalize the experience of foster youth for the viewer and, ideally, inspire different opinions of foster youth by the general public that sees the film.

In addition to changing our view of foster care and group home kids by hearing of their success as adults, AMU will expose the additional challenges gay youth face in order to succeed within the foster care system. Does being gay add to the challenges of being an institutionalized youth? Or does being gay provide more tools to rise up to the challenges presented in the foster care system? AMU will also expose the “double closet”: the large presences of closeted LGBT children who are not “out” about being a foster youth or a member of the LGBT community. The latter is a topic that is rarely discussed.

Only recently has there been an interest in the existence of and specific struggles pertaining to LGBT foster care youth. In California alone, many groups now exist that lend support to these youth, namely Out of Home Youth Advocacy Council (OHYAC) in California; Walden House in San Diego, CA and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) Youth Program operating out of San Francisco. By collaborating with a variety of these organizations for both advisory support and interview subjects, AMU will have access to many voices and ideas to ensure that this film provides a new evaluation of foster youth. In addition, these contacts will ensure collaboration for distribution and broadcast.

AMU utilizes a unique collaborative approach in its creation process. Not only will the filmmaker collaborate with the interview subjects in developing their interview questions, but the interview subjects will also interview each other. AMU ensures that those characters featured in the film are also incorporated into the film’s research, production and development. Embracing this angle in interviewing subjects, AMU will have distinct style and voice. Further enhancing the involvement of the film’s subjects, they will participate with the production, rough cut, advisory, and screenings of the film. These screenings will be either together as a group, or via remote visual technology, individually. The film director’s background as a former foster youth herself, which will be explored as a narrative voice to tie together the various documentary components, will add an authentic voice to the film. Moreover, AMU will utilize new media options and distribution methods increasing its accessibility and ability to connect with youth.

AMU aims to expand on the genre of the personal documentary with plans to use methods of experimental filmmaking and sound design to further the goal of presenting a passionate, poetic and thoughtful view of successful foster youth. Moreover, the use of animated text statistics as transitional elements between the interviews and stories further enhance the informative nature of this project with an experimental edge.

While it is true that there are thousands of youth who fall threw the cracks and end up on the streets, there are thousands of others who choose college and professional work. Education is a running theme for survival in our stories and our message is universal. We all know that sometimes those who have had it the easiest run the hardest. For foster kids whose life is deemed hard by default, life is never easy. Of the former foster youth this film’s director has met, many have also been over-achievers for survival. By aiming to be the best to survive, foster care and group home kids beat the odds and our existence will provide hope to other foster youth currently institutionalized. We aspire to inform them that there are options in life even at the perceived bottom. AMU aims to present a new image of foster care and group home youth: one of strength, hope and survival. Our stories are not rare or unique, but they are overshadowed by the constant representation of negative statistics.

Everyone seems to be talking about foster care youth these days, and some have made films about it. For example, Aging Out by Roger Weisberg is a compelling and heartbreaking look at the challenges former foster care children face. Television stations feature exposes on the abuses and harsh realities of the foster care system. These are all worthwhile and relevant. But, unfortunately, they all show the same face of the foster care system: a face of hopelessness, difficulty and despair. AMU features a new important perspective that needs to be told. And the time is ripe to tell it.