High Five: a Suburban Adoption Saga

High Five is a story of international adoption unlike any other. Cathy and Martin Ward travel to the remote village of Gorodnya in rural Ukraine to try and adopt five biological brothers and sisters – ages 6 through 17. Unfortunately, at first, the Wards are only able to adopt two sisters, Alyona and Snezhana.

Almost a year later the adoption of three remaining children is still not completed. Cathy and Martin refuse to leave the other children in the orphanage for long, and they bring Sasha, Yulia and Sergey to Canada for a three-month-long summer-stay. It is a period of both tenderness and tension, conflict and discovery. Only then the adoptive parents find out about the abuse by the kids’ birth father, his violence toward his children and his wife. Cathy and Martin have to accept that memories, losses, and wounds deeply affect any orphan but especially an older one.

Two years later, everything is set for the Wards to return to Ukraine to go through the court system and finalize the adoption of Yuliya, Sergey, and Sasha.

The camera stays with the family, capturing the emotional journey and the adjustment of the non-English speaking teenagers in school, in the society and with the adoptive parents. Yuliya terribly misses her youngest sister Tania, who was adopted many years ago by a Ukrainian woman. While her brother Sergey finds new friends and new interests in Canada, Yuliya is lonely and moody. Her middle sisters and the youngest brother effortlessly adjust to the new parents, forgetting that back in the orphanage Yuliya was their protector, caregiver and on a bigger scale, their loving mother. It’s painful for Yuliya to accept that her role has been taken over by Cathy.

It’s been six years since Martin and Cathy started this unprecedented adoption journey. For now, they see the failure with Yuliya as a painful exception in their experience of parenthood, which will not be repeated by any other of their children. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that all the loving children who are so close with their parents at the age of twelve, will not forget all the sacrifices their father and mother have made for them.