In this moving episode of the Children First Family Law Podcast, Krista welcomes acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ellen Bruno, the creator behind the powerful films “Split: The Early Years” and “Split Up: The Teen Years.” These documentaries feature a cast of real children who had experienced divorce of their parents, with purely their voices and artwork, no experts, no therapists, no adults – just the kids. Split featured the kids when young; Split Up then followed up with the same kids 10 years later, reflecting on how divorce had impacted them as they emerged into late teens and young adulthood. The films give incredibly powerful insight every parent going through family law dynamics should watch, as well as any professional in the family law arena. The film is raw, honest, and deeply impactful.
In her conversation with Krista, Ellen shares the personal journey that inspired her to create Split, which began after her own divorce when she heard her own child and others in carpools from school discussing issues of divorce and the lightbulb that went off in her head that she could use her filmmaking to give voice to the voiceless and shine a light on the impact of divorce on children She had already spent much of her career in humanitarian work and international filmmaking attempting to give voice to many different people groups, with films focusing on issues at the forefront of human rights.
Ellen began her relief efforts in remote Mayan villages in Tabasco, Mexico. She worked in refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border with the International Rescue Committee, in Vietnamese boat camps with The Refugee Section of the American Embassy in Thailand, and as director of the Cambodian Women’s Project for the American Friends Service Committee.
With a masters degree in documentary film from Stanford University, she is a recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships, a Goldie Award for Outstanding Artist, an Alpert Award for the Arts,an Anonymous Was A Woman Award for the Arts, a Shenkin Fellowship from Yale University School of Art, and was an Artist-in- Residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, among many other accomplishments.
Krista and Ellen explore recurring themes from both Split films, including identity shifts, the emotional cost of “two homes,” and the unspoken pressure children feel to take care of their parents. They also highlight how parents, legal professionals, and mental health practitioners can utilize the films to gain a deeper understanding of the child’s perspective—and why it matters so much. Ellen shares, too, the potential for another film following up yet again with these now-adult kids and/or their parents, a possibility Krista encourages.
This conversation is a true gem for the podcast and a must-listen for divorcing parents, co-parents, attorneys, and anyone who works with families. It’s a powerful reminder that small choices can create lasting change and that truly listening to children can transform our approach to divorce.
In this episode, you will hear:
- The emotional cost of silence and shame in divorce
- Why kids need space to share their experiences without adult interference
- The impact of small co-parenting gestures, like family photos or shared events
- How the Split films help parents and professionals re-center on children
- A reminder that divorce doesn’t end in six months—it’s a lifelong transition
Resources from this Episode
To purchase the “Split” films:
Contact Ellen Bruno: info@splitoutreachproject.org
www.childrenfirstfamilylaw.com
All states have different laws; be sure you are checking out your state laws specifically surrounding divorce. Krista is a licensed attorney in Colorado and Wyoming but is not providing through this podcast legal advice. Please be sure to seek independent legal counsel in your area for your specific situation.
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The Split Films’ Ellen Bruno: Giving Voices to Kids of Divorce Podcast Transcript
Ellen Bruno 00:00
I realized, wow, you know, divorce really still is the monster under the bed of many kids. You know, there is still this kind of a shroud of silence that’s both protecting parents and they think protecting children. And I started to realize there was nothing available for my kids. There was no vehicle to encourage my kids to really talk about what they were feeling, you know, outside of a direct conversation with me or their dad. And also, there was a lot of shame, you know, and there was a lot of silence among their peers. And I thought, well, you know, everybody seems to be doing it in our culture these days. Half of my kids’ friends, their parents were divorced. How can I start the conversation? How can I hopefully begin to normalize it, or at least let kids know that they’re not alone. The feelings that they’re having are quite common and quite healthy in many ways. And so that was really the genesis of the first film.
Intro/Outro 00:55
Welcome to the Children First Family Law podcast. Our host, Krista Nash, is an attorney, mediator, a parenting coordinator, and child advocate with a heart to facilitate conversations about how to help children flourish amidst the broken area of family law. As a child advocate in demand for her expertise throughout Colorado and as a speaker on these issues at a national level, Krista is passionate about facilitating and creatively finding solutions to approach family law matters in a way that truly focuses on the best interests of kids. Please remember this podcast is provided to you for information purposes only. No one on this podcast is representing you or giving you legal advice. As always, please enjoy this episode and be sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast with others you think would benefit from this content.
Krista Nash 01:44
Today on the podcast, we are joined by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ellen Bruno, whose work shines a light on the tender, often overlooked corners of human experience, including the experiences of children in divorce. Ellen is well known for her powerful films Split andSplit UP, a two part journey into the emotional landscape of divorce told entirely through the voices of children. Split gave us an unfiltered look at how kids process the breakup of their families, and then years later, split up revisited those same children as teens and young adults, capturing their insights, experiences, resilience and truth with the same raw honesty. In this conversation, Ellen shares why she made these films and why she believes that listening, truly, listening to children, is one of the most important things that we can do. Stay tuned. This is more than a conversation. It’s an invitation to see the world of divorce through the eyes of the ones too often left out by our children. Well, welcome today to the Children First Family Law podcast. I am delighted today to bring you Ellen Bruno, who some of you who are in the family law world may recognize as the amazing documentarian who has done these Split films, which everybody involved in family law needs to watch both practitioners and parents. I will have Ellen talk through the two different films that she has done, but they are just absolutely incredible at helping people understand from children’s voices what actually kids are going through, and so welcome Ellen, and thank you. I’m just privileged to meet you and have you here today.
Ellen Bruno 03:25
Thank you, Krista, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Krista Nash 03:29
So let’s get started just by talking a little about maybe give us just some background on how you got into filmmaking, because I know you’ve done a wide variety. I mean, give us some of your passion projects, and then we can talk about what struck your heartstrings that made you start to do this work in the area of divorce, because it’s a little different than some of your other work, right?
Ellen Bruno 03:48
Yeah, well, I actually had a previous career as doing Refugee Relief, and I was working in refugee camps going back and forth between Southeast Asia for about 10 years, and in the course of direct service work, you see a lot of things that aren’t being reported in the news, you know, and there were just a lot of gaps. And I had a lot of access to stories and issues and people that reporters didn’t have when they sort of flew in and flew out. And so I was pretty motivated to find ways to tell the stories of the people that I was seeing in war zones and refugee camps. And that really was my motivation to get into filmmaking. Was really trying to facilitate the voices of these people that really did not have voices. So that’s really what launched me into filmmaking. And for many years, I had one foot in filmmaking and one foot in direct service work, and so I was continuing that work, and then at one point, I was sitting with a 10 year old friend on a hillside, and he started talking about his parents divorce. And I thought, wow, things are not much different than when I was a kid. I grew up in a very small Italian Catholic community in Rhode Island. My parents got divorced in the 60s. Nobody in town was divorced. And with all the best intentions, my parents really thought the best way to manage this for the four kids was to talk about it as little as possible. You know, even though there, my mother’s friends were coming, sitting at the kitchen table and sobbing over a cup of coffee. I can’t believe this is happening. Oh the poor children, you know. And of course, we’re with an ear shot, right? This sort of a very well intended silence. And at that point, I was about 10 or 12, and I had a very active imagination, and my parents would go into the bedroom, you know, for an hour and come out, and clearly they were upset, and then they’d say, Let’s go have ice cream. Let’s being super nice. And so in my child’s mind, I concocted really the worst case scenario, which was that actually I thought I was dying. I had a minor medical issue that got lost in the weeds in the course of their divorce, and I just put two and two together and ended up with five. And really it was quite traumatic for me. And again, they were well intended. They didn’t know. It’s what people did. You know, don’t upset the children, right? And then I found myself years later, with two small children separating from my partner, and I realized, wow, you know, divorce really still is the monster under the bed of many kids. You know, there is still this kind of a shroud of silence that’s both protecting parents and they think protecting children. And I started to realize there was nothing available for my kids. There was no vehicle to encourage my kids to really talk about what they were feeling, you know, outside of a direct conversation with me or their dad. And also, there was a lot of shame, you know, and there was a lot of silence among their peers. And I thought, well, you know, everybody seems to be doing it in our culture these days, half of my kids’ friends, their parents were divorced. How can I start the conversation? How can I hopefully begin to normalize it, or at least let kids know that they’re not alone. The feelings that they’re having are quite common and quite healthy in many ways. And so that was really the genesis of the first film. I stepped out of my work around human rights, mostly in Southeast Asia and Asia, and sort of stepped aside for a moment to gather a group of these kids in the Bay Area and just sit down and talk to them and give them the platform. So that’s really how the film began.
Krista Nash 07:36
I love that, because it seems to me that it links to the voices of those whose voices weren’t heard in important ways, right? And giving a nice thread through your work, right? Which do you see it that way?
Ellen Bruno 07:50
Very much. I was not one of these kids that was making films at the age of 10 in the garage. I grew up without a TV in my house. I grew up very media illiterate, so I wasn’t motivated by filmmaking, per se, people think, wow, filmmaking, it’s so interesting, it’s so sexy. I had no interest in that. I was really looking for ways to share the stories that I was seeing and in a way, these films, these two films, seem quite different from my past work. But in another way, actually, the films that I make are very much about how people make sense of the circumstances that they find themselves in, that could be a war zone, that could be in a refugee camp, that could be in a brothel in, you know, the Thai Burma border, and kids find themselves in a situation where they have no agency for the most part. And so it was very much the same process of giving a platform, giving voice, and allowing people to begin to make sense, you know, begin to tell the story of what they’ve been through in a way that helps them make sense of it, and that can be helpful to others. And so it’s very similar in that way, in a sense, I see the whole trajectory of my work, both in with the human rights issues, and these kids are very much about survivors of trauma, in a way, and making sense of that in finding power in the storytelling with the idea that I can make things better for other people. And the kids, very much, were on board in this idea. They came on board. You know, it was very much a collaboration where, what do you think other kids need to hear? What do you think the parents and other adults in your life need to hear? And that was very much the beginning of our conversations. We’re in this together. I’m helping you technically, here’s your opportunity to say all the things you’ve been wanting to say to the adults in your lives. And also, you know, tell kids what this is like, you know, buff kind of the good and the bad of it. And because these kids are so straightforward in their telling, and they do tell things that were hard, and they do tell things that were funny or odd or actually positive about their experiences. When other kids watch these films, they actually trust the kids, because they’re not being sold a bill of goods. They’re not being sold, don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay. They’re listening to other kids say, This is really hard at times. It’s really sad at times, it’s really fun at times. All of these things are true. And look at me, I’ve gotten through it, and you can too. And so it very much is kind of straight shooting, you know.
Krista Nash 10:28
So tell me more about how you started this process. So you got this idea sitting on the hillside with this 10 year old, and you thought there’s something here that I can harness. So did you just put out, you know, kind of feelers to friends in your community, or how did you find these kids?
Ellen Bruno 10:43
I started talking to kids. I mean, you know, the kids in the back of the car when we’re driving to soccer practice, I could, you know, it’s funny, because it’s like, sometimes I’m thinking, don’t these kids know I’m here in the car driving, get about the fact that I’m here driving, and can hear everything they’re saying. And so it was always, I always loved having that little kind of fly on the wall in the car, and I started to realize that my kids would only talk about this with other kids who understood, and that there was this whole realm of the kids who didn’t get it, whose parents were divorced, and they those kids, in a lot of ways, didn’t get it. They didn’t get what it really meant to have to miss birthday parties and to be going back and forth and to always forgetting your computer or your favorite shirt or whatever. You know, it’s just one of those things that other kids didn’t quite get. And so there was this way that I realized my kids would always continue with the other kids who knew what they were talking about. I’m gonna be with my dad this weekend. I can’t go to the party. Oh, and I thought, Okay, well, and so I started saying, Hey, would you kids be interested in talking about this? Just within our circle, our community, and the kids were really game. They really again. It was this idea that, still to this day, despite the best intentions, kids are not really truly given a place to speak what is in their hearts and on their minds. They’re so busy protecting their parents, or, you know, making sure everything’s okay and that there still is this sad and unfortunate silence that’s happening. And the truth is too as many of us know, parents are so overwhelmed. They’re so at the end of their resources, and they care so desperately that their kids are not negatively affected by this divorce, and yet they don’t really have the bandwidth to fully take it in when they’re in the process. They’re like, Johnny, how are you doing? And Johnny’s going to say, oh my Hey, mom. And I know a lot of parents are like, Oh, thank God, because I can’t deal with another thing. It would be really hard if Johnny was having a hard time. But the truth is, you know, the most Googled phrase where the word divorce is the effective divorce on children. So you know, parents are waking up at three in the morning and going to the computer saying, Oh, my God, how is this going to affect my kids? But, you know, they almost can’t take it in from their own kids, and so that the films are interesting and surprisingly effective separation. You know, it’s not their kids talking to them, so they don’t need to be in a really defended place watching it. It’s other people’s kids. So, you know, they’re sort of a little bit off the hook. They can take it in. And yet, when they’re watching the films, they realize, oh, you know, maybe my kid’s having that experience, or, Oh, I should talk to my kid about that. Or, actually, that feels really familiar. Yeah.
Krista Nash 13:35
What year was it that you started this, that when, when you began the process of talking to the kids?
Ellen Bruno 13:41
2013 was the first film, and then 10 years later, we went back to the same kids, because many people were watching these films, using these films, and reaching out to me and saying, Do you have anything for older kids? I’ve got teenagers. I’m working with a lot of teenagers or I have teenagers. And I thought, oh, do I really want- to I was in the middle of other projects, and I thought, hey, why don’t I just check in with these kids and see how they’re doing? I had been in touch with some of them, the ones that are family friends, but I reached out to all of them, and 11 of the 12 eagerly said that I would love to participate. And so the 12th one didn’t play a big part in the first film, and he felt like he didn’t have much to offer him. So I thought that’s fair, but they eagerly participated. And then, you know, 10 years later, when these kids are teenagers and young adults, they really can look back at the entirety of their childhood and their experiences and report from that place, and they’re much more articulate. They’re very articulate as young kids, but they’re even more articulate. And, you know, the second film really becomes a cautionary tale, I think, for parents. You know, it very much shows the spectrum of the results of parents behavior, from being very cooperative and, you know, having. Meals together on important days, and really having a blended family to the very other, opposite of, you know, ongoing conflict years later, you know, at which point it seemed at least two of the kids in the film decided, I am tired of this war zone. I’m done with it. I’m choosing one camp or the other, it’s just too much for me, and I got to move forward. And so when parents realize that divorce doesn’t happen over a six month period, divorce is an ongoing situation. Divorce is a transformed family, and it continues for a child’s lifetime into adulthood. And interestingly, when professionals watch this film, or parents watch this film, and they come with their parents divorced, it is really profound for them, you know, and in conversations have happened between children in their 40s, 30s and 40s and their parents that never happened before. You know, it really is. It’s a lot easier to say, ah, when Jonah said that in the film, I thought that was really funny, or I thought that was really sad as a point of departure for a conversation. It’s much easier to refer to the experience of a child in the film or a teen in the film, that it is to say, Well, I feel, to begin with the I, I feel when you do this, you know, it really upsets me. So the kids become a very interesting, you know, vehicle for conversation in a way that it again, isn’t directly pointed, and allows more space for both children and parents to engage in conversations and professionals. Krista Nash 16:47
So when you started these interviews, when it became a little more formal, did you get a lot more than ends up showing in the film? I mean, was it and how did you if somebody could see all of your I don’t know what you call it filmmaking, all the cuts or whatever, all the Explorer outtakes, okay, if somebody could see that. I mean, would you have had hours and hours and hours? Because the Split film, each of these films is, what about how long?
Ellen Bruno 17:08
Maybe the first is 30 minutes.
Krista Nash 17:11
I imagine you collected much, much more. How did you cull through all these stories and how did you decide? I mean, of course, I mean, encourage everyone to go watch the film, and we can talk later about where they go do that. But how did you decide the approach you were going to take from a filmmaking perspective, you know, weaving in some of the animations and those sorts of things too.
Ellen Bruno 17:32
So my way of having conversations when I’m making films is to allow the space for people to come forward with a story they want to tell. Everybody has one, at least one, central drama in their life, right? Everybody has something that’s sort of this emotional touchstone, or the place from which a lot of the experience is informed, you know? So it really is just opening up with a few simple questions to begin with, but I didn’t begin with a list of Okay, now, tell me about this. Tell me about that. What’s it like when you go back and forth to your parents house? How does it feel when your parents fight? You know it was, they were much more open ended questions and inevitably, and this happens in any with children adults. People get to the story they need to tell, and then it becomes following that story and becoming curious about that story. What was very interesting to me was how many of those stories were similar for these kids, and real clear themes emerged. And those themes became these little chapters in both films, two homes, new people, which is new partners, back and forth. And so a lot of children’s experiences are really actually quite consistent. They’re experiencing the same things because of the structure of the system, right? And so that’s really how the choices were made. Was really saying, Okay, which of the kids talking about new partners does the most effective job. Who’s the most articulate? Let me gather those together, but importantly, because the goal of this film was to encourage kids, and there had to be a lot of attention paid to the time when kids were struggling or sad versus when they, you know, found their voice, or felt empowered or found solutions. So that balance was really critical, because, like I said earlier, kids need to trust the kids in the film. They need to know that they’re getting it straight. But I started a couple of conversations with kids very close to me that I’ve known since birth, and maybe because they were so close to me, within the first minute of the interview, they were just having a really difficult time, and I thought, I’m in no position to handle this emotionally. I can’t go any further, and this childwon’t be helpful to other children at this point. The kids needed to be kids who had gotten to a point where they were figuring it out, they had gotten over the worst of it, and they could speak from a place of relative wholeness. And so that was really important. Now that said we had various focus groups with various cuts of the film, some with parents and some with kids. And there’s one piece of the younger film where a young boy, Trevor, was very upset because he was waiting and waiting for his father to show up at his sixth grade graduation, and his father did not show up. And it’s actually a very sad part of the film. You could see how upset he was at that and really how difficult that was. Well, when that segment was included in the parent focus groups, the parents were like, No, you can’t keep that in there. That’s going to make the children sad. No, it’s too sad. So we took it out and showed it again to a group of children that had seen it before, and the kids were like, Where’s that boy? Where’s the boy? Where his father didn’t show up. And it turns out that even though the majority of kids had participating parents Trevor’s story, that particular story became a touchstone for these kids sadness. It held their sadness, and it was really important for that to be included for the kids. And so there’s this way that kids need to have their experiences seen, and even though it may not specifically be the very experience they had, they need to have their their sadness about this honored, and they need to have their fantasies about their parents getting back together. Honored, you know, and not indulged. But, and I know, like I say, my parents got divorced when I was quite young, and in my sisters and I, when we were in our 40s, we had this kind of ongoing joke, which was actually quite poignant for us, which is, do you think mom and dad are going to get together even though they both had been remarried, it’s still, you know, somehow that paradigm of the nuclear family feels whole, and the breaking of that feels, for many broke in, and the way to make things better would be to put that back together again. Well, we know things don’t work that way, but whether it’s a kind of a cultural thing or some, you know, whatever it is, it’s a very common sentiment. I hope my parents get back together, you know, why can’t they just do that? Why couldn’t they just do that for me? And so that needed to be honored. You know, even though one of the boys said, I tell it to my moms and they say, Well, you can think that, and you can wish that, but it’s not going to happen. There you go. But he had the space to say that to his mom, and that was helpful and supportive for him. So these kids are really wonderful teachers for us in a lot of ways. I think there’s a lot to learn from the younger selves and a lot to learn from them once they have come together.
Krista Nash 22:57
I mean, was it like these stories all flow out? All the kids are open. I mean, when people see this film, they will see that it really is. I mean, just a few, I guess, comments from me on the film, just my perceptions of it have been just how raw and honest these kids are. There’s a really nice blend of their innocence and the tainting of their innocence through this process, like the very unfortunate growing up that they’ve had to do. And there’s a rawness to it, you know, it’s got down to what they eat at different houses. At one house I shower. At one house, I bathe. I have to bring this to my mom’s. I gotta drag this back and then there’s some optimism, right? There’s some funny parts. There’s some parts that, you know, but overall it makes, I think, our Parent and Family Law practitioner. It should, at least. It made me feel this way. It just makes you sad, right? It’s kind of like, you know, there’s, there’s hope in it, because at least, by capturing this, hopefully we all start to listen better to children’s voices and what children are going through, although I do have to say, and I want to at the end of our time, talk about how professionals are using this and how courts are using it. But we watched it in Colorado at a big family law conference, and so I’m there with lots of judges, hundreds of judges and professionals, attorneys, and everyone is so thrilled that they made us watch this, and this is years ago, you know, thrilled they made us watch it, and I think, very impacted by it as humans. And then everyone leaves the room, and it’s like, let’s go back to our warfare that we normally do. And I don’t know how much the professionals are actually listening right? Because I agree with you that the children’s voices, it’s like we say we want to hear this. But then how many of us are actually asking our clients to watch these or taking positions as attorneys to recognize that what we do really helps coach parents and lead them on a track that can cause some of the problems? Films or make them better. How we ywe operate. So I mean, it’s like one step, but I think overall, it is so important for parents going through this to be able to listen to this, to watch it, to get their kids to watch it, because it just does give so much insight. And so were those your feelings about what you think as you look back on the first split film. And I shouldn’t even say the names, right? Have I? Is it just Split and Split two? What’s the actual name?
Ellen Bruno 25:27
Well, the first one is Split: The Early Years, and the second is Split Up: The Teen Years. Yeah. Well, you know, it’s interesting. The first question you asked, Did this come together easily? I mean, the truth of it was, I was actually involved in a very high conflict divorce that lasted for many years. And my lawyer became a good friend, and at one point we met for dinner, and she said, Oh, I had a really, you know, I had a rough day, you know, I had some hard cases today. And she said, of course, nothing like yours, meaning yours, right? And she said, yours. I just, you know, no matter what we do, no matter what you do, we just can’t seem to get beyond this. And I didn’t know if I was honored or offended. I just thought, Wow, isn’t everything like this? Isn’t this just the system? And yes, you could say yes, it was. But then I realized, well, okay, so when I made this film, the last thing I wanted to really do once it was shot was spend more time thinking about divorce, and spend more time thinking about how divorce would affect children, and especially my children. And I was reviewing one of the interviews once my daughter came in the room. She was about 12 at the time, and she stood behind me, watching the computer and watching this one girl speak, and she said, Wow, that girl is talking about everything that I think. And I thought, Okay, well, that’s a wake up call. I need to, I need to get on this and move through this despite the fact, despite my aversion to being in divorce land for any longer than I needed to. Yeah, it was a little bit of a struggle, but it did come together very quickly and and I think one of the decisions that we made early on, I think that was a really important decision, in retrospect, was to not include parents and to not include experts, to not mediate these kids experience in any way, to not point any fingers at parents or other children, to not do any supposed dues. And so then we also decided to try to find places and ways to go in deeper into the feelings and sort of the fantasy states, or the mind states of these children. And that’s when we started. I started crawling under the kids beds. Everybody’s got a pile of artwork that they’ve put under some kid’s bed, you know? And started crawling under the bed with kids and looking through their artwork and finding little pieces that then became pieces of animation that told had these little interstitials that became really nice moments to go deeper into the feeling state. And they were very sweet animations, and they provide a bit of a break in the film, and they’re really engaging for the children. And so I think that the no adults decision was key for the children, but particularly key for parents, because, you know, parents are pretty tired of people telling them you should do this, you should do that right and being directive, and they just, you know, many of them, they got their position, and they’re not budging, and doesn’t matter who’s telling them what and who’s wagging a finger at them or but these kids have the ability to really open their heart and really give them an experience that will hopefully inform the decisions and choices they make. And what you said, you know the divorce professionals, you know the court system, mediators, attorneys, are really on the front line of divorce, and it’s that early before parents get entrenched, before they become too afraid. That’s the time when professionals can influence parents to really make better choices, and by understanding how the choices they make affects their child’s experience and well being in a very visceral way by watching the film, actually positions parents in a place where they are much more likely to enter into a mediation center with an open heart and truly with The interests of their children at heart. And so the films- you mentioned that earlier, but I think I’ll just mention now how the films are being used very effectively. They’re being used by mental health professionals across the country, by mediators. Mediators find it very effective to assign the film. To both parents before a mediation session. That can mean they need to watch it at home the night before, or that means that they’re sitting in the waiting room for a half hour watching it before they walk through the door. They’re really great primers to focus people’s hearts and attention on their children. They’re heart openers, because hearts are closed when they go into those sessions, because that’s a defensive position. People are afraid and they’re angry, and so if they can open their hearts and walk into a session, a negotiation session, a mediation session, in many courts. Now the films are being assigned in San Francisco. Here you watch the first film as part of the orientation to go into either mediation or in a group before you go into the process of litigation. And so more and more courts are now making the viewing of one or both of the films a mandatory part of you know you cannot pass go until you begin here and so early in the game is critical. It doesn’t mean later in the grant game with entrenched parents, the films cannot be effective. The films can be used just in segments. They’re chaptered. And so if say there’s some negotiation going on about when to introduce the kids to a new partner, the parents can sit there in the session and watch five minutes of kids talking about their experience and new partners, and that can be the beginning of the conversation, the beginning of a child centered conversation. And we have unlimited streaming licenses that we make available to professionals into the courts where they can simply share links with clients or share links with parents for them to watch the films on their devices at home. So, you know, the logistics of it are quite easy.
Krista Nash 31:46
How does that work? Cost wise, since we’re talking on that topic, how would a professional mental health professional or an attorney mediator, how would they go about doing that? What does that cost to be able to provide it to their clients?
Ellen Bruno 31:59
So for law firms, mediators, mental health professionals, the streaming licenses are $250 a year, or for both films, it’s $450 now, we work with nonprofits. We work with people that have low budgets. We’re very flexible. Our mission is to get these films to as many parents as possible. The way it works logistically is our tech team creates a portal that’s branded, say, the Miller law firm. And so a link is sent to a parent, and the Miller Law Firm logo is on top, and it says, Welcome to the SPLIT films. The Miller Law Firm welcomes you, and you know you’ll watch this film or two films, and be sure to pay attention to this. And if you want to share the film with your children, these are things you need to pay attention to be sure you watch it first, so you have your experience of it, and you’re prepared for conversations with your children if you choose to share the film with them after you’ve viewed it. And so just very simple instructions, but it’s very colorful, it’s very user friendly. And also the films, I think that it’s important that the films are very colorful and user friendly. They’re not kind of yucky and creepy, and they don’t feel like homework. They’re actually entertaining and sweet and endearing, so it’s not a really negative experience to watch these films. Kids love the films. Yeah, they feel so heard and they feel so recognized. And what’s really interesting is, I went to my niece’s class room, there were a bunch of nine year olds sitting on a carpet watching the film, and you could see in the course of the film, it was very clear which kids understood this experience from their own perspective. I mean, they were like, up on their knees, kind of leaning forward into the monitor. It was really interesting, and they had so much to say about it. And what was really interesting is that it became a way to kind of foster empathy, and among their peer group, you know, where it’s like, oh, and kids were saying, Oh, now I get it. You know, my best friend, you know, her parents are divorced, and her dad lives here, and she starts telling her story in a way that she now understands what it really means to be going back and forth, or what it really means to be missing. And you know, there’s something that I noticed with my kids, is when my kids went to their dad’s household, and I had say, and I would pick them up, and they would want them would come out. And I was thinking, wow, why are they dressed like that? And it made me realize that we’re not just asking the kids to go from one household to another, or we’re not just asking kids to sleep in one bed and sleep in another bed. We’re asking them to be different. Children. They dress differently. The language that’s acceptable in a household is different. The food they ate is different. The expectations that adults have in both households are often very different. And so it’s not as simple as shifting locations. This is like shape shifting. For these kids, you know, and they need to assume new identities. And that’s why I found that when my kids would come back to my household, they would just need this space to a couple hours to just morph, really. And what happens, unfortunately, is the parents on the receiving end, miss their children so much that they’re, you know, they’re walking the door. Okay, we’re making muffins now and then, after we make muffins, let’s sit down and watch that and tell me about you you know, in the kids like, What’s my name, you know? Okay, so it’s very interesting, and I really hope that parents understand what we’re asking of our children. And there’s not much we can do about some of it, but there is a lot parents can do about a lot of it. And I think that’s particularly true in the older film. When you kids are the teenagers and young adults are very articulate about the amount of work they are doing within the family structures to manage things the amount of time management they’re doing. One girl says, Well, you know, I just every week I think, Okay, well, I need to spend 25% with my mom of my time, and then I need to spend 25% of my time with my dad, and then I need to make time for my sister, because I don’t want my parents to think I love one more than the other. This is a very typical, you know, calculus going on that I did when I was 40. Oh, it’s Christmas morning. We better get to dad so he doesn’t feel like, you know, but then Mom’s going to be home and, you know. And so this, it’s a lot of work we’re asking of these kids, because they need to manage time. They need to manage the idea of fairness and the amount of quote, unquote, love they’re giving. They need to manage the simple logistics of two households. They need to caretake their parents in ways that I think a lot of parents are not fully aware of. The amount of caretaking their children are doing. That could be being peacemakers if there’s a lot of arguing going on, you know. So when at a time when our kids are doing all of the impossible work of growing up, you know, that alone, you know, kind of flowering into young adulthood, that’s an awful lot of work in the best of circumstances, and now that we’re having to manage these two households and these two parents and the emotional and logistical complications of that we’re asking a lot of these kids, granted, a lot of this can’t be changed, but a lot of it can be changed, and a lot of it can be made easier for these kids. And that’s why these teenagers and young adults are really sort of ambassadors from the world of kids. There’s all of this language about the best interests of kids. Well, my attorney said at one point, you know, in 40 years, your kids are the only kids I’ve met. Isn’t that and I thought, wow, that speaks volumes, you know. And so here they are showing up with courage and dignity, and they’re beautiful beings, showing their experiences young kids sharing their experiences as young adults, and hopefully parents can take the lead and realize how simple changes, simple choices can make a world of difference. And yes, I know parents are exhausted, and yes, I know parents are stressed out and angry and afraid and defended. I understand all of this, but the truth of it is we as parents are always sacrificing for our kids. We’re working two jobs, we’re not getting enough sleep, all of the things that we do for our children and for parents to realize that it costs nothing to make a different choice, it can happen within a split second to make a different choice that will probably be one of the greatest gifts they can give to their child. And they need to be encouraged, and they need to know they can do it. And you know, oftentimes, as you know, attorneys and mediators are default therapists. I mean, you’re just in a position where you’re hearing all of this emotional stuff from these parents, and you are in the up, you are in the position to do some guidance. And so I encourage that to happen. And it would really be a game changer. It would really be a game changer for kids. And also we need to learn a different way to do divorce in our culture, because there’s a way that our culture fuels the fire, you know, where parents are separating. And I remember in the early stages where my closest friends and family would say, Ah, look at there. He goes again. Oh, he’s, you know, he’s being such a jerk or whatever, you know, and thinking that’s their best way to support me. Well, of course, it felt good, you know, like eating too much candy. But the truth of it is, we need to learn how to support families. We need more positive role models for parents doing it better, and people need guidance, because. We do it one way in our culture, and it’s not supportive of the adults in the equation, and it’s not supportive of the kids. The truth is, the parents will be happier if they make better choices. They will have more joy and love in their life. They will have less toxicity and anger in their life. And so it’s not just about the kids, it’s about the parents. It’s about everybody’s well being and joy and future happiness and open heartedness. Krista Nash 40:27
When you made the second film, : Split Up: The TeenYears, that was about 2023, years later. So tell me a little bit more about that. What was it like to go back and gather these kids up again. I was struck by how much they’d grown up. I love in the film, how you remind the viewer, okay, this is this little guy, and this is now the adult version, or nearing adult version, of this little guy. So there’s some really nice synergy, where you remind what they said before, and now you have this almost shocking juxtaposition with this kid who is now so much more grown up and so articulate and so coming into his or her own in a really beautiful way. And I love your placement of these kids. A lot of them, it’s like next to their bed or, you know, I don’t know, there’s something intimate about it that I noticed, and they are all so thoughtful. And there’s a sadness to all of them as they talk about it. I think that really permeates the film. You know, I hear what you say. It struck me too that they’ve taken so much of this on themselves and a little bit like, it’s a little less like, well, as a little kid, here’s the logistics I have to deal with as I shape shift, right? It’s more of a sadness and a reflection on I learned to live with this, but it wasn’t ideal, you know. Or a few of them are like, it really my parents did this well, and they shout out to their parents in that way. But more of them are like, Oh, it’s just this was my reality, and so I don’t know how it feels, it doesn’t, maybe feel as optimistic. I don’t know. What are your thoughts on that?
Ellen Bruno 42:05
Well, you know, the kids are very frank, and I think that it was sobering for me, because, of course, now my children are young adults, and I can see with them, for example, many of the kids and in the teen years talked about how they feel about relationships and the viability of romantic relationships. That was really sobering for me. I hadn’t thought about that before, you know, and you know, there are just quite a few kids saying I don’t know if I’m going to get married, or I just don’t know how, you know, I feel about that, because it represents a lot of pain for them. Yeah, that was very sobering. And so back to my earlier point. You know, divorce doesn’t happen within six months and disappear. This is part of these children’s central essence now, right? It’s informing the way they are in the world and the choices they’re making, like everything that happens in our past, right? So that was a surprise to me, the lack of faith in viable relationships. Of course, you think it shouldn’t be a surprise. But So also, a lot of the kids talk about, you know, in a kind of a proud way, that they learn to be independent, they learn to grow up faster, you know, they had to learn these skills, you know, and they they understand the value of those skills, but that they had to learn them at a young age was sad to me. You know that, Oh, what happened to their childhoods? Why did they have to grow up so quickly? Is there a way to foster that innocence of childhood and that the freedom, the lack of stress, even as parents separate, I believe there’s a way to do that, because we can see a couple of the kids in the film are actually very whole as the result of their parents bending over backwards to make that happen and to cooperate and to be gentle with each other. It’s, believe me, I know it’s not easy, and I know a lot of these parents. I know what they go through, but they consistently make it a practice to try, at least to make the choices- the best choices, and they do that together. And it’s not always easy, but you can see what value that has for the kids. And, you know, there’s always this idea that kids are resilient, right? I’m so tired of hearing kids shouldn’t have to be resilient, right? You know, kids should just be in their childhoods. And you know, they’ll have plenty of time in their lifetimes to learn to be resilient and learn to deal with struggle and with challenges and stuff. You know, I’m no fan of kids encouraging kids to be resilient. I want kids to be kids as long as they can be. Yeah. So, yeah. One thing I can say, when I approached these kids about making the second film, I didn’t know what to expect. I thought some of them would say. I don’t want anything to do with that. I’m in college now, or I’m about to graduate from high school. I’m living my life, right, right? And I realized how important this film, the making, theco-making of this film, was for these kids. Almost every one of them could recite almost any line in the film. It was so interesting. They were constantly quoting lines in the film, and so it’s in their parents told me when they were younger that it was a game changer for them, both for the kids, feeling like they had a voice and that their experience was valuable and valid, but also it became a way for the parents to come together around that experience of their child’s participating, because at the opening of the first film, both parents wanted to be there. Both extended families wanted to be there. And here they were sitting on either side of their child in this theater in San Francisco, grandparents that didn’t speak to each and there they were with their best intentions, their best self, forward, supporting and proud of their child. I got so many lovely notes after that, and so it was a way that it was healing for them in a very deep way. And like any sharing of deep experiences can be healing, and that’s why I need to go back to this need to encourage kids to really give this space for children to share their experience in a way that isn’t burdened by our response to their experience, right? We need to become very good listeners, very good receivers of these children experience in order for them to move through and I mean, like Jonah said, you know, one of the most valuable things that I had from my entire childhood was to be heard, was to be listened to, and that’s something that, again, it’s such a simple thing. I’m not saying it’s always easy to hear difficult things, but we know that in our own interpersonal relationships, you know, we just need to have the courage to show up and listen. Nothing more needs to happen, most times, just simply to show up and to listen so that the other person feels heard, and that can be incredibly healing.
Krista Nash 47:11
When we were prepping for this, t, we were talking about how we both think it’s so important to reiterate or emphasize this problem of the absence of the voice of children generally, in divorce. You know, there’s a lot we do a lot on this podcast talking about kind of how we get kids heard, but it’s still very, very difficult, right? It’s through child custody evaluations. It’s a lot of it in adversarial litigation posture. Sometimes it’s through therapists, but it’s even when kids will talk to me as a best interest attorney. You know, we’ve got a lot of rules that make it hard to get that information to the court. I think one of the most important parts of my role is that I can go talk to the kids and then be rational and talk to the parents, try to get attorneys out of the way if they’re causing problems, and just try to say, Can we not come together? You know, I actually really think I’ll start using your films more too, like, let’s watch this and talk about it, because getting it out of that court and adversarial system is almost step number one to getting this heard in a more important way. I’m actually doing some other options with parents, where I’m like, you don’t have to go off to court. Why don’t you just come and let’s do this amicably, and I can still go talk to your kids, and I can bring your kid in, your kid talk with us. There’s ways to do it, but they’re all outside, really, like, nobody’s doing that well within, within, really, any system. I mean, even internationally. So what are some of your thoughts on that about how we I mean, you had your own high, high conflict divorce. What are your thoughts about howthe risk of not listening to kids, or ways we should be? You know, there’s thoughts you have on, you know, why we’re not and how we should?
Ellen Bruno 48:54
Well, I think why we’re not is because, well, from the parents perspective, it’s almost unbearable. It’s almost unbearable to know that a choice you’re making is going to cause your child’s pain is going to be difficult. That’s not universally the truth, but it’s often the truth, right? So that alone is really difficult for parents, however, to take that fear and turned it into a more empowered Yes, the choice you’re making is going to be a struggle and a challenge for your child or your children, but you have the ability, in very simple ways, to frame this experience in a much less painful way for your child, and to move through this experience in a way that really does minimal damage. So there’s something about these children being sort of ambassadors from the world of children, sort of proxies, right? Because the voices cannot show up in much of the system. And so if enough of. Children’s experiences are reflected in these films, and these films can be considered by both professionals and parents. I think that in many situations, that’s the best we can do at this point. You know, just listen, pay attention and ask the question, How can I do something even politely differently that encourages a better outcome for children and for parents alike. I have to keep saying that, because I think that’s something it’s not just about the kids. It’s about the experience of the parents, and they need to understand that the choices they make are going to have a major impact on what their experience is like moving forward for the rest of their lives, right? How comfortable it is or is not, for them to be standing at their child’s high school graduation, or how how awkward it is to have to have a schedule to see the grandchildren because you cannot be in the same kitchen together. There are ways to avoid all of that which is going to be better for your well being and your happiness, as well as your children. And so I think that very simple fact is critical and becomes an opportunity to do even a very slight pivot that can change the experience for both kids and parents.
Krista Nash 51:19
So do you have some thoughts or examples from your own situation, or from these kids and doing these two wonderful films you’ve mentioned several times, you know, like it can be the slightest difference, the slightest change this thinking about doing something one way and not the other, for people who feel overwhelmed about well, what does that even look like? Do you have thoughts that you could provide that are actually more tact, you know, tangible here to say, here’s a couple examples of how you could do A or B, and it makes a big trajectory difference.
Ellen Bruno 51:51
What we found is really helpful is if one parent watches the film and then watches the film with their child, the children very often want to watch the film with the other parent. And so if there’s a way that even within the household, both parents can watch this film, that can be a game changer, like anything, I remember being in a mediation situation with my kid’s dad where we were really locked in, and the mediator was brilliant in terms of bringing us truly to our children, much like the film can do. And I remember walking out of that session and walking down the street with my kid’s dad, and he stopped and he said, look at those flowers. And we’re standing there in front of this garden in this neighborhood. And it was miraculous to me. Okay, so opening our hearts to our children, getting us out of our entrenched positions and allows an opportunity that felt impossible an hour before. And so the experiences of children can do that, and it can take 1000 different forms, and it’s so simple and speaks to us as parents in a very primal way.
Krista Nash 53:11
I think of it as a lot of micro I’m just going to invent this on the fly, but a lot of micro gestures of grace in co-parenting that can really change the tone, right? Like, the problem is, you’ll get calls as an attorney for a parent, and they have these questions they bring to you all the time, and it’s, should I do this, or should I do this right? And attorneys have an opportunity in that moment just have them do what’s right. You know, like, should I invite this person to the kid’s birthday party? Should I get a Mother’s Day gift for you know, my kid wants me to buy a Mother’s Day gift? Should I do that or not? You know, it’s like being kind and wanting the other person to flourish, trying to remember that though you’re uncoupled, you’re doing that in a way that can make it better for your child, right? It’s just like, a million little things. I can’t there’s some movie where it’s like, how does this why do I love this person? Oh, I love this person for a million little things. It’s just at the end of the day, a million little things. And it’s like, how do you have a good working relationship? You know, you make little gestures, you know, like, where are we fighting about whether this kid can go to a funeral or be in the theater club? Because it’s, I mean, it’s just a million little things, right?
Ellen Bruno 54:30
And exactly, it can be something so simple, like, oftentimes, the parent will not allow the child to have a photo in the room of both parents together with the child. And so there’s this way that parents want to erase this child’s history, and when you erase this child’s history from the Children’s perspective. And several kids said this to me. They say, did my parents want me? Was I unwanted? Because they’ve erased my history. They’ve erased their love story. Kids need to know if it’s true thatthey came from love that they were wanted. And if you say you cannot have that photo in the room, my daughter’s favorite photo to this day is a picture of her dad and I holding her when she’s about three. And it’s not a particularly good photo, but it reminds her that there was love, and she came from love, and to take that away from a child by prohibiting any image of the other parent in the house or erasing that history like it was all bad, our relationship was all bad. Well, you know what? A lot of the time it started with a lot of love, people being really in love with each other, and it’s very healing for kids to be allowed to have that piece of their history know that they were wanted and that they came from love.
Krista Nash 55:43
Absolutely. Okay. Well, we only have another minute, but I do want to ask you, are you or can I encourage you that we should do another film? Maybe as they get older, or as they get married or with their parents? I don’t know. Would it be appropriate to bring parents and kids in at this point, even though, now that you’ve had 10 years of just the kids doing those reflections, I do think it’s just so, so powerful. And just wondered if you have any plans?
Ellen Bruno 56:09
I’ve thought often, and you know about making a film with the parents of these family groups, because I’ve been so impressed. You know, both of the struggles and the, you know, successes of these, the way these parents, and it’s the whole spectrum, right? Have handled this. And again, it’s not easy, you know, but to have parents sit there and say, You know what, I would just love to have a film where both parents are sitting there on a stool talking about, you know, that was really hard, and this is how we did it. And I’m glad, in the end, we stuck with it, or that felt impossible, much like the films for the kids. Parents need realistic yet positive role models. We don’t have enough of that in our culture. And so just to say, okay, it was hard, but we did it and it paid off.
Krista Nash 57:01
That’s what parents need to hear more or or we screwed this up in some ways, and we’ve been nicer to each other.
Ellen Bruno 57:06
And exactly, you know, I wish I had done that now, 10 years later, I wish I had done that, because I realized how important that was to my child, and I just did not have a clue at that moment. I didn’t realize how simple choices would have such a profound impact. So that. And yes, of course, I’m very much interested in the next 10 years, once these kids start having more substantial relationships, probably families of their own, or not to do that, what does that look like? Yeah? Because really, this is, yeah, it’s just a very interesting human story unfolding among these.
Krista Nash 57:39
It is and we don’t have a lot of long longitudinal yet. We all know so many people who have gone through this. So I just think it’s such important work. And I’m going to link to your email We’ll link to the film so that, and because individual parents can just buy, I just did that to look at, to look at the other day, they could just buy, rent it, or buy it or whatever, right? And stream it for hours.
Ellen Bruno 58:01
The URL is splitfilm.org and it’s a website that has a lot of resources, including a really fabulous guide we have for both parents and professionals, that’s written with the first film in mind, chapter by chapter. So you know two homes. What do you need to know about two homes? What do kids say about two homes? How to talk to parents about two homes. How to talk to kids about two homes?
Krista Nash 58:22
Is that something that is available for purchase?
Ellen Bruno 58:27
There it is, yeah, hard copies and download. It’s called the Split Film Guide. It’s really fabulous. On the website, there are some sample pages. You can look through it and,
Krista Nash 58:33
Okay, great. I will link to those. Well, I just want you to know that I’m a fan girl, and I just like, as I started the podcast, it’s still so young, I’m like, I’m just gonna ask big like, what about Ellen Bruno? She did that amazing film work? So thank you for saying yes. It’s just a gesture of your graciousness to the community and to the work and to your heart for it, because you certainly didn’t need to do this with me. I hope you’ll stay in touch if you come across people who want to be on the podcast and share their stories, any of these kids, I would love that. It’s hard for people to do that, but I would absolutely love to have them on talking about it. Or parents, it’s just a small, like, very unprofessional way compared to your beautiful filmmaking. Thank you for being here, and I really hope people will go watch this, because I do think it is. There’s no way your heart isn’t touched by watching it. You have to pause. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t pause when you watch this. And have to evaluate how we are doing this and how we can do it. Like you said, just little changes can actually improve outcomes for kids. So much. So thank you so much. Really, I’m really grateful you joined me today,
Ellen Bruno 59:42
My pleasure and thank you for what you’re doing. Krista, really thank you for changing families.
Krista Nash 59:48
I appreciate that. All right. You take care. Thank you. Bye, bye.
Intro/Outro 59:53
Krista is licensed in Colorado and Wyoming. So if you are in those states and seek legal services, please feel free to reach out via ChildrenFirstFamilylaw.com that is our website where everyone can find additional resources to help navigate family law as always, be sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast with others you think would benefit from this content.