‘Off and Running” is a warm and tender documentary about an adopted teen’s efforts to find her birth mom.
The African-American girl, Avery Klein-Cloud, lives in a comfortable Brooklyn apartment with her parents, a lesbian Jewish couple, and two similarly adopted brothers: the mixed-race, Princeton-bound Samuel and the much younger Zay-Zay, of Korean heritage.
Avery’s effort (with the help of the adoption agency) to contact her real mom, who lives in Texas, proves frustrating. While the Texan initially responds to Avery’s letter — “I just want to know who I am and where I came from,” Avery writes — later notes are few and far between.
The strain of waiting taxes the girl’s relationship with her adoptive parents and threatens to derail her plan to go to college on a sports scholarship. (She’s a track star in high school.)
The director-producer, Nicole Opper, has known Avery’s Brooklyn family for years, which no doubt accounts for the film’s intimacy. As the father of an adopted daughter, I was very moved. But the film is so well done that just about anybody will have that feeling.