Sarah McCarthy

Deep in a forest by the Baltic Sea, a group of Ukrainian families come together to start the healing process with the help of golden retrievers and palamino horses at an animal therapy retreat. In the safety of the forest, the children’s memories of being illegally deported to Russia and their families’ struggles to rescue them are unraveled with the help of skilled and sensitive counsellors. The joy and humour the children discover during their time in the forest make it easy to forget that their stories are the reason the International Criminal Court recently issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin. Nearly 20,000 abducted children remain in Russian institutions.

Eleven year old Masha Kulabokhova is about to be adopted into fourteen year old Cami Diaz's family. Masha grew up in a Russian orphanage; Cami was born and raised in Wisconsin and has been the exclusive focus of her parents' love her whole life. The process of Masha becoming part of the Diaz family is going to change both girls forever. The Dark Matter of Love follows Masha as she leaves Russia to the spend her first year as part of the Diaz family, who have also adopted five year old twin boys Marcel and Vadim. When the reality of bonding with children who have grown up in institutions turns out to be more difficult than they ever imagined, the Diaz's hire two of the world's best developmental psychologists to help them build their new family - through science. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, The Dark Matter of Love melds the story of the Diaz family learning to love, with rare archive footage of science experiments exploring parent-child love.

For one emotional night, a group of slum children in Mumbai, India, get a chance to experience a different world as they perform The Sound of Music with a classical orchestra, fostering hopes that it could change their lives forever.

Russian activist Anastasia Shevchenko was kept under house arrest for two years for speaking out against the government. During that time, her young special-needs daughter died alone, away from her mother's touch.

A revealing account of Pen Farthing's evacuation of an Afghan animal shelter during the West's chaotic withdrawal of 2021. We examine why a nation was so vocal, both for and against, the idea of saving animals when so many humans were at risk.