Beautiful Raw

Depicting the lives of children in the U.S. foster care system, this animated documentary combines audio from live interviews with hi-def animation. The youth stories are fragmented, much like the lives themselves, but come together over the course of the film to tell a story of perseverance & survival.

As the journey begins, a young mother dies in a car accident, a teenage runaway finds solace in solitary confinement, and a father forgets to report his 12 year old daughter missing. The children are sent away, they live with grandma, move in with strangers, and take to the crime-infested streets of urban America. They are abused, institutionalized & branded as “foster kids.” Yanked from the families they care about, they are forced from one place to another until they can no longer remember where they’ve come from. Yet they are resilient. They find comfort in school, religion, a good meal and a warm bed. Ultimately they realize it is their own decisions that will make or break them.