This week, the award-winning documentary, Blood Brother comes to Pittsburgh's Three Rivers film festival. It's about a remarkable Pittsburgh man named Rocky Braat, who has made a drastic change in his life in order to help others.
http://youtu.be/AE8mmV8eg3Y
Rocky made the decision to change his career path and gave up his life in the Steel City to go to India and live with children at an HIV/AIDS orphanage. His best friend from school, director Steve Hoover decided to follow Rocky and chronicle his journey.
Hoover and Rocky were very close growing up as the duo lived together in college, went home to Hoover’s house for the holidays, studied together, and according to Hoover “kind of did everything together.”
With this kind of friendship it's hard to imagine one of them leaving, but Hoover believes that Rocky was looking for purpose in his life and found it in serving these children. He also thinks Rocky was striving to find a family relationship.
The journey to build these relationships and find this purpose in Rocky's life included many incidents and some miscommunication with the local villagers. One of the the tools the group had at hand to try and solve these problems was their camera. According to the film’s producer, Danny Yourd, the camera offered a bridge to connect to the Indians and gave the film crew a way to communicate.
Blood Brother will be shown as part of this month’s Three Rivers Film Festival on Saturday at 4:30 at the Regent Square Theater.
