Angela, 1991

Angela, 1961

Angela's ex-husband Luigi

Yaribel, the next generation

Anna's funeral

Children of Fate is a dramatic story of life and death spanning three generations in a poor Sicilian family. At the heart of the film is Angela, a gutsy survivor who struggles against an abusive husband and a life of poverty and crime to keep her family together.

Angela and the notorious slum where she once lived were first filmed in 1961, by Robert Young and Michael Roemer in their powerful documentary, Cortile Cascino. In 1991, Robert's son, Andrew Young and Susan Todd, went back to Sicily to film Angela and her family today. In Children of Fate, these new scenes are interwoven with scenes from the 1961 film.

Although the family's living conditions have improved a great deal since their days in the slum, they remain poor and seem trapped in a fatalistic belief that they cannot change their destiny.

Children of Fate is a stark portrait of the culture of poverty, and of one family's inability to escape the powerful grip of the past on the present.

Purchase this video from First Icarus Films (Institutional buyers)