Vipi Watoto
(in production)
a documentary on children taken from dump sites, goldmines, fishing boats, rock quarries - and sent back to school. This spring, Len Morris goes back to Kenya to catch up with the former child laborers. Now that they are back in school, how have their dreams and expectations changed?
Butterfly Butterfly
How do we treat our children? What changes have the last 30 years seen in the promises we have made to offer food, healthcare, education, safety, clean water and gender equality. This film is drawn from thousands of hours shot around the world that examines that question.
Have we kept our promises to afford children "special status" as outlined in The Declaration of the Rights of the Child, the most ratified document in UN history?
This is a deeply personal film that surveys my 30 years of filming children all over the world and measures the changes that have occurred for better or worse in children's human rights. (2022)
Children of Bal Ashram
Profiles an extraordinary couple, Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi and his wife and partner Sumedha Kailash as they work to free thousands of children from forced labor and give the children at their refuge, Bal Ashram, a happy childhood, raising them to fight child labor themselves. “The most powerful voice is the voice of a victim, a survivor. A child.” (2019)
The Same Heart
Nearly one billion children live in poverty. Yet, year after year, development assistance funding trickles in too little, too late. But what if the funding mechanism were structured differently so that the United Nations did not have to pass the hat for official development assistance, and beg nations to make good on their pledges? What if, instead of reacting to the emergency du jour with appeals to sentiment, the world community saw a dignified life as something every human being has a right to? What if a small tax on financial transactions could create a consistent pool of money to provide a baseline level of dignified existence? What if we had the same heart for all children, not just our own?
Rescuing Emanuel
Setting out to make a film about street children across the globe, the filmmakers are hijacked by a filthy 13-year-old boy in Nairobi, Kenya. Belligerently stoned on shoe glue, Emmanuel will not be ignored. While his name means "God among us," his life, like all street children, is in constant danger. But who will notice if it is snuffed out?...(2009)
Stolen Childhoods
The first in a trilogy of films about children's human rights, Stolen Childhoods is the first feature documentary on global child labor ever produced. The film features stories of child laborers around the world, told in their own words. Children are shown working in dumps, quarries, and brick kilns. The film places these children's stories in the broader context of the worldwide struggle against child labor. Stolen Childhoods provides an understanding of the causes of child labor, what it costs, what we must do to eliminate it. (2005)
Narrated by Meryl Streep.