Synopsis:
Mike Carroll was one of the first photographers to travel to Romania after the fall of the communist regime in 1989. When he arrived, he walked into one of the most horrific scenes of the 20th century. His incredible photographs and heart wrenching stories of the pediatric AIDS epidemic in Romania ran in The Boston Globe and The New York Times and opened the eyes of the western world to the plight of the Romanian children. What followed was a twenty-year odyssey for Mike and his colleagues as they fought to bring help to a population of children in need, in a country that they hardly knew. "Hand Held" is a documentary film produced and directed by two-time Academy Award nominee filmmaker Don Hahn. Hahn shot in Boston, Bucharest, and Transylvania for nearly two years on this extraordinary motion picture about one guy with a camera, a band of New Englanders, 160,000 orphans, and the unforgettable story of how they changed each other's lives forever.