IMITI IKULA

Some 75,000 street children live in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia and one of the poorest cities of Africa. Most of them are orphans and infected with HIV. Memory is eleven years old and has been living on the street since she was three. She refuses to be called a street child; she has paid for what she owns and states proudly: “I’m a human being.” Memory would rather be a boy, and that’s how she behaves. She has close-cropped hair and wrestles with her friends. But she is still a girl, and that makes life on the street even harder. She cannot remember how many times she has been raped. Yet despite the misery, the filmmakers have succeeded in making an optimistic portrait of the buoyant, zestful young vagrants. Winning the trust of the generally shy children, who are used to being constantly chased away, the directors stay in the background, showing the life of Memory and her friends through a succession of minor events. At night, the children gather around a campfire and discuss the heroic actions of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the strongest man on earth...