THE RESCUE OF IANI I and II

The Rescue of Iani documents a landmark case that shocked even the adoption authorities in Romania..

When as a 10 month-old orphan Iani scuttled in his cot after volunteer nurse Alana, she never imagined that six years later Romanians would be claiming she’d stolen the child.

Ordered by Romanian authorities to return the six year old, Alana and Iani are ripped from a life in clean, green New Zealand to former Soviet block Romania, caught for the next two years in a bureaucratic nightmare.

Iani had become a New Zealand schoolboy who only spoke English. But authorities threatened to take him from the only family he’s known, Alana, and return him to an orphanage.

Any chance of adoption is gone with the cancellation of international adoptions by a Romania desperate to become part of the European Union, and its answer to a call to deal to child trafficking.

Filmed over a heart-wrenching two years, this two part documentary reveals the extraordinary story of one woman’s battle to keep the Romanian orphan who stole her heart.

One of hundreds of thousands left in Romanian orphanages over the last decades, Iani’s birth parents reappear to halt the process not once but five times.

It is then revealed Iani is one of at least nine children left by the parents. They want US$100. But Alana is adamant she will not ‘purchase’ the child she has put her life on hold for since she was 22.

You may buy the video Rescue of Iani (Parts 1 & 2) over on our store page.