The kids are OK is a production of Metropolisfilm in collaboration with the NCRV. Directed by Ton Wolswijk.
Monday, January 12, 2015 will be exactly five years since Haiti was hit by one of the worst earthquakes ever. On Sunday 11 January, NCRV will broadcast a documentary about the hastily set up air bridge between the Netherlands and Haiti, with which more than 100 adopted children were rescued from the rubble and brought to the Netherlands.
After the earthquake of 7.0 on the Rigter scale that kills a quarter of a million people and makes 1.5 million homeless, contact with the children's homes where more than 100 adopted children live at that time is impossible, one of the houses is even partially collapsed. It takes a while before it becomes clear that the children survived the quake. More than half of the children have already met their adoptive parents-to-be from the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, the brave plan arises to take the children away. An air bridge between Haiti and the Netherlands can bring the children to safety. A tough and exciting mission, in the chaotic conditions in which the country finds itself. But how do you organize such a thing?
Macky Hupkes, director of the Dutch Adoption Foundation knows how to charter a plane. The World Children's Association is joining this initiative. The children are picked up by Dutch marines by bus and transferred to Port-au-Prince airport by navigating through the devastated country. The atmosphere at the airport is tense, 'get the fuck out of here!', one of the soldiers shouts. When the plane takes off, the discharge comes. More than a hundred children start to cry. Macky Hupkes texts to the Netherlands: 'Close the doors, the most beautiful crying concert ever'.
In NCRV 2Doc The kids are OK, those directly involved tell their story. How did the adoption organizations get the governments of the Netherlands and Haiti to authorize this action? Was it ethically right to get the children to the Netherlands more quickly? How did the parents experience the news of the earthquake when they had already embraced the child they were about to adopt? And what about the children now?
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