Kinderen van Stalin plot
The Alexander Kajaia Mental Hospital in Surami, Georgia, once housed 700 patients from all over the Soviet Union. Fifteen years after Georgia's independence, the psychiatric hospital still has thirty male and forty female residents. It's poverty trumps: the plaster is falling from the walls, food is scarce and the louse is a difficult enemy. But above all, there is emptiness on the vast grounds. One has nothing to do; the men and women hang, lie, stand or sit aimlessly outside or inside. The camera is everywhere, registering in every room and under every tree the empty existence behind lock and bars, but also captures the personalities of the residents, who have not all lost their sense of reality. Sometimes they recite beautiful poems, or start a melancholic song.