Anne anders!

Anne is 27 years old. She is the youngest child of a large family. An outsider, because Anne is a Mongol. But Anne is also an outsider in another way. It seldom happens that a Mongoloid child grows up among non-handicapped children at an ordinary school. It took Anne's mother a lot of trouble to go against the current. "When Anne was six, psychologists advised to send her to a school for imbeciles, as it was then still called. Within a fortnight, I noticed that this school was not right for her. She imitated children who had far more serious handicaps. My other children started complaining: "Mummy, Anne is acting so oddly. She's falling all the time". Immediately, I took her away from that school". She then went to a regular nursery school and to an ordinary primary school. She learned to read, write, and do sums, she played tag in the schoolyard and had a bosom friend. At the age of fifteen, Anne and her mother moved to France. Anne is an adult, now. She has a boyfriend, and she works and lives fairly independently in a family-replacing home. Anne is speaking for herself in the film. She speaks French and Dutch. Anne about her life: "Alain is my great darling. Sometimes he is sweet. Sometimes he is not".
Her mother concludes with: "Anne does not need me, I need Anne. I am old and can still mean something to Anne". (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)