Daniel Drema

HOUSE OF CHILDREN

UK/Zimbabwe, 2019, 64′

A glimpse of life as seen through children at a Zimbabwean care initiative. The only source of information: the children themselves. Eschewing a traditional narrative and instead opting for a true to life experience, watching House of Children is like being a participant in a conversation, rather than a fly on the wall. We see almost nothing of the children’s surroundings, which has a powerful cumulative effect: the audience is forced to imagine a world entirely from their point of view. And like the way a novel slowly awakens using only words, the film similarly restricts our eyes, but opens up the imagination…

Daniel Drema
Filmmaker based in London. Since graduating with a BSc in Film & TV Production he has shot and edited everything from weddings to dental surgery over the past several years. He has an ongoing relationship with My Life Films, a charity that uses the power of film as a care tool for people with dementia, and with whom he learned early on the principles of long-form storytelling when making life story films. A few years ago he decided to go on a government-funded volunteer programme at a health clinic in Zimbabwe. There he came across Musha Wevana, a children’s care initiative, where he shot House of Children in his spare time.