If I could make such warm, heartfelt, deeply personal - for them - present for my parents as the director of Children of the Sun - himself a "Kibbutz child" - dedicated to his parents, I would be a very happy man, and they would be very lucky parents. Using only archive footage from 1930s to 1970s Kibbutzim with the commentary of aged first-generation kibbutzniks, with a particular focus on communal and practically devoid of parents interaction child rearing, this documentary can be a great eye-opener to people like me - who thought they had some idea of what Kibbutzim were like. In fact those early, particularly ideologically-charged, utopian Kibbutzim were very, very different from their modern remains - in fact, at times the feeling of watching Hitlerjunge or especially Young Pioneers is unnervingly real. But one of the film's great strengths is not trying to serve as an illustration for a Wikipedia article on Kibbutzim, but focusing on the emotional aspects of growing up there as children - and through that alone tells more than enough about the ideology, the promise, the ultimate fading of those ideas. Overall, an interesting and enjoyable documentary.
