Dreaming Nicaragua is a documentary that follows an art teacher around different parts of Nicaragua as he interacts with children in these different communities. It focuses on four different children, Yuri, Nauri, Josef, and Izabel, who face different kinds of hardship in their lives but who we still identify with strongly. Directed by Marcelo Bukin and sponsored by the Fabretto Children’s Foundation, the film is at least partially a call to action to donate money to organizations like Fabretto and to provide help to families who face hardship that we might not have even been aware of before watching.

Some central themes of the movie include hope and the courage of the human spirit, hardship and its effect on goals and worldview, and common desires shared by people in uncommon circumstances. All four children faced struggles, both individually and within their broader community, that I will likely never face in my lifetime, but the movie did a good job of framing their life and making the kids simultaneously relatable and different. The documentary was shot in 2010 at various locations throughout the country. It used the innocence and bluntness of children to convey a fairly dark message without coming off as overly cynical. I felt strongly that the documentary is truthful and feel that I have a reasonable sense of the realities of people in these communities.

Overall, I liked the film, even though it was often very sad and hard to watch. I needed to keep reminding myself that the harsh conditions people in these communities face exist regardless of my knowledge of them, so me seeing the movie is a good thing because it forces me to be more aware to challenges the decisions I make in life. I loved how personal the interviews were and how upfront and direct most people seemed to be.