After watching this movie it becomes virtually impossible to not scroll through your Facebook news feed and not see it all as trivial. It's hard to not see your life and the way you have been living it as trivial. I find it difficult to give this movie something as trivial as a rating, a 10/10. It captures something some real, so raw that it transcends such binary terms as good or bad. This "movie," rather, is beautiful. I feel like a spectator or tourist to this reality of life. To the pain and suffering, to the loss and sorrow. If these are the things that comprise our lives what drives us on? What drives those children in that remote village on? Is life truly worth fighting for? Are such minuscule moments of love and happiness worth the years of anguish that ensue when the very ones that are the causes of such love and happiness are taken from us? It all makes life fell so tedious. And yet it's those moments that make life matter. It's the tears that are testaments that life matters to us, even the most seemingly inconsequential life of a girl or boy half way around the world with AIDS. While a rating would be so inappropriately trivial I cannot help but to give the movie my highest regard.

Blood Brother is a beautiful and compelling story that takes the audience on an emotionally complex journey with Rocky Braat, Steve Hoover, and HIV positive Indian orphans. What I loved most about this movie is that it demonstrates that true love gives a person the strength to do and endure things far beyond what that person could ever imagine that s/he could do and that even the most ordinary person has the capability of doing and being a part of something extraordinary. One of the most poignant and hardest to watch scene was Rocky at the hospital taking care of the orphan near death. Rocky didn't just sit with the child, he acted as father and nurse staying by the child's side the entire time and cleaning up the oozing sores that covered his body including his eyes. Warning, this movie will leave you changed and will make you want to be a part of something outside of yourself.

At the our screening of Blood Brother at the Sundance Film Festival, the filmmakers had to ask the audience to stop our standing ovation. As a host for Sundance Film-Forward and the Human Rights Watch Film Festivals, I've seen hundreds of docs, and Blood Brother is far-and-away the best documentary our group had seen in years, and the best film we saw at Sundance this year - period. The film doesn't just have heart, either, but is full of stunningly beautiful cinematography with scenes that make the filmmakers seem impossibly lucky. The film swells with emotive music, inspired events, unscripted words of incredible wisdom, and moments of raw transparency. In the end, it becomes a film that transcends its genre. At its core, Blood Brother is a universally appealing film, which I believe is one of the reasons it was such a rousing success at Sundance. It is a buddy film, a hero's journey, a drama, a comedy, and a love story all rolled into one epic documentary that reminds the viewer just how beautiful and valuable even the most tragic of lives can be. After the film, Rocky (the subject of the film) and the film crew hung around to answer questions, and it was clear that the film was an honest and genuine glimpse into the lives of extraordinarily compassionate people who truly live up to the radical kindness expressed in the film. It certainly deserves every accolade it has garnered so far.

It is excellent film. I believe with all of my heart that it is a must see film. Steve Hoover made this film about his best friend Rocky Braat, because he was impacted and felt this story needed to be told to others. I agree with Steve and I am grateful his was able to tell it. Rocky gave up everything he had here in the states and moved to India, to take care of orphaned children with HIV/Aids. I know Rocky and Steve, they are being totally real. I feel that this is very inspiring and leaves me wondering what could I do to make a difference in someone's life, like Rocky is making. It is about giving unconditional love to others without expecting something in return. It is about the challenges that life can bring and how one might react to those challenges. This story is ongoing and updates are posted to Youtube.