Winner of the Coral Award for Best Documentary by a non-Latin American at this month’s Havana Film Festival, Bravo’s film delves into the controversy that surrounds Cuba’s lost generation of children, who, between 1960 and 1962, were sent off to the US by their parents because they believed a wildly circulated, bogus law that the state would assume parental authority. Organised between the Roman Catholic Church and the US State Department, this clandestine operation – one of the largest airlifts of unaccompanied children – resulted in an exodus of over 14,000 children and was known as Operation Peter Pan. The children were then settled with foster care and orphanages across the US.
Featuring interviews with the key players and the children – now adults – and containing revealing footage of the children, their stories and their new lives, the film focuses on one group of Peter Pans as they travel back as a group to the country they left 50 years ago.
"A truly shocking story brought to attention by a truly remarkable and indefatigable film maker, Estela Bravo," said Fitzgerald. "Operation Peter Pan movingly and compellingly lends voice to a forgotten generation whose testimonies may otherwise have been swept under the carpet of history.”
