Educational Media Reviews Online

One Family is a documentary that follows a Vermont couple as they travel to Ethiopia to adopt their daughter Meskerem , who was living at an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Layla House. The viewer is struck by how beautiful, friendly and loving these children are despite their circumstances; yet, as the film's adoptive father profoundly points out, there is a slight feeling of consumerism as the couple goes in to select their child from the mass of orphans. Additionally, the film highlights the benefits of older adoptions (Meskerem is about 10 years old) and open adoptions. Meskerem's mother died when she was a small child, and she was placed in Layla House only because her family could not afford to keep her. A good portion of the film focuses on the merger of Meskerem's new family and her birth family (a large group, including 2 brothers and a grandmother, who are involved in her life and clearly love her dearly). The film wisely does periodic checks on Meskerem once she is at home in Vermont to monitor her progress.

Produced by Adoption Advocates International, One Family tends to feel like a commercial of sorts for international adoption; it does not address the mechanics of adopting internationally, and it only chronicles one family's experience of adopting one child (there were other families in view that adopted siblings, and there is a network of Ethiopian adoptees in the United States). Nonetheless, the film is amazingly emotional, without being heavy handed, and would be a great film to show as a supplement in the classroom (or in the library).

One Family is of very good quality in terms of video, audio and editing components, however, it should be noted that this reviewer had difficulty getting the DVD to play. It did not respond in a standard home DVD player or in 2 personal computers running Windows XP; it did finally play in a computer running Windows Vista. Otherwise, One Family is recommended as a supplemental source of information, best suited for public libraries, high school and academic libraries, and compliments curriculum units on adoption, family and child studies, multicultural studies, and African studies.