Last week Lund hosted a free screening of the upcoming film, Instant Family. The film portrays one family’s experience with adoption from foster care. It is inspired by director Sean Anders’ personal experience of adopting three siblings from the foster care system and stars Mark Wahlberg and Rose Bryne. The film is due out in theaters on November 16th but Lund had an exciting opportunity to offer a free advanced screening to the community.
The film is full of heart but remains true to the realities of adoption from foster care. It is expected to have a PG-13 rating when it is released. It does not sugar coat the challenges faced by children who have been exposed to early trauma or whose lives have been disrupted by being removed from their homes possibly to multiple placements. The three children in the film break things, swear, scream, refuse to follow the rules time and time again. There is a dinner time scene that features flying potato chips, hurled mashed potato, spilled milk, tears, accusations and bi-lingual declarations of hatred.
But there is love too. Sometimes it looks a bit more Hollywood – home renovation demolition, a hilarious confrontation of a janitor riding a ‘zamboni’, a grandma in an airbrushed T-shirt, and a hairbrush that ends up in the toilet. But it looks real too. The foster parents try to establish routine and boundaries, they take solace at a support group, they listen, they adapt, they are there for each other and most of all, they persist.
We won’t give away how the narrative plays out for the family though we will say that there were few dry eyes by the end of the film.
“The screening was well attended with an array of people connected to foster Care and adoption,” says Melissa Appleton, Post Permanence Services Coordinator at Lund. “We had Lund staff, DCF workers, therapists, foster parents, adoptive parents, and adopted teenagers. The overall consensus from parents is the film felt real in capturing the feelings and experiences families go through. While the film focuses on the parent perspective, several parents who attended with their teens found it opened up some great conversations.”
One audience member, an adoptive parent, shared the following:
“I have to say that the story hit home as it was so real. My hope is that it will be a movie that will be seen by all, as everyone needs to know what our kids have gone through and will for a while. It is very powerful, intense, and very funny movie. I plan to bring the rest of my family to see the movie when it is released.”
Since the film seems to take place in California, there are elements of the foster care and adoption processes that are not done in the way they are done in Vermont. To learn more about adopting from foster care in Vermont, click here
Watch the Instant Family trailer here
