Adoption documentary shows how families love birth mothers
Created by a team led by an Alberta pastor
An Alberta-based film about open adoption has garnered international attention.
The documentary I’ll See You Later (www.IllSeeYouLater.com) tells stories about Albertan families who have chosen open adoption. In open adoption birth mothers choose which family will adopt their child. Often adoptive families maintain a relationship with the birth mother, and she continues to be part of her child’s life.
“There’s this real connection between people to make that brave and courageous decision for the sake of that child, and for each other,” observes Preston Pouteaux, the film’s producer and writer, who is also a pastor.
The film was shot in the summer of 2020. It hit the film festival circuit last summer, and has appeared in more than a dozen festivals in Canada and internationally, capturing awards from several of them.
Pouteaux says he hopes the documentary reveals adoption stories that aren’t typically told. Often people think adoption is shrouded in secrecy, he said. But open adoption shows the courage of birth mothers who choose it.
“It’s a real hopeful picture of what adoption stories can be and often have been,” he says. “A mother really can adopt her child to another family and do so with her head held high, not in a culture of shame or hiddenness, but with courage and joy that they’re doing something really special.”
Pouteaux, pastor of Lake Ridge Community Church in Chestermere, Alta., was inspired to make the film by a family he knows who adopted more than 20 years ago. They connected him to other willing families.
While some of the people interviewed for the documentary were Christians, the goal was not to make an explicitly Christian film, says Pouteaux. Still, he says open adoption continues the Church’s long tradition of caring for children.
“Christians have an eye to see children who need a family,” he says. “I’m grateful that’s part of our heritage and what we’ve done in the past, but I think it’s something we can have new imagination for again. To be able to love families, but not just the child who is being adopted, or the adoptive parents, but also the mother who had that child and celebrate her, loving her. Including her in the story is, to me, just a beautiful next stage in the expansive love of God for people.”
“Including the birth mother in the story is, to me, just a beautiful next stage in the expansive love of God for people.”