
Bulgaria’s Abandoned Children: Revisited
Mogilino, a Bulgarian village institution housing 75 disabled children, became an international scandal in 2007 when Kate Blewett's BBC film showed the neglect inside it: children who could not walk or talk not from disability but from years without anyone teaching them to. The footage prompted MEPs and government ministers from across Europe to visit Bulgaria, inspect other institutions, and fund de-institutionalization efforts in a country still working through the aftermath of Communist-era care systems. This follow-up sends Blewett back eighteen months later to find some of the same children and see what changed. She films them in new settings, with new caregivers, testing whether the public outrage translated into anything durable or whether the cameras simply moved on. The first film is present throughout as a point of comparison, its images of withdrawn, untouched children set against whatever progress the second visit can document. The question driving the return trip is blunt: did exposure actually fix anything, or just make people feel like it had?