The Film

"FROZEN ANGELS is a mesmerizing work that is not so much a science film as a startling conduit into the future of the American Dream, where "perfect children" can be added to the shopping list. In their visually enthralling documentary, Eric Black and Frauke Sandig brilliantly evoke an atmosphere of familiar otherworldliness as they survey the field of assisted human-reproductive technologies."    Shari Frilot, SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

FROZEN ANGELS investigates the "future" as it exists, today in Los Angeles, following a cast of bigger than life, often funny, characters: wealthy sperm bank presidents, expectant surrogate mothers, gene researchers, radio-talk-show hosts, NASA scientists, infertile suburban couples, just-born and come-of-age adult designer babies, blonde, blue-eyed egg donors and feminist lawyers. The film warns of the coming dangers this brave new world poses to race relations, dividing society and the rest of the world into genetic have and have-nots.

Not a science film; FROZEN ANGELS makes the connection between individual desire and a society that would seek to design its children. It takes a rollercoaster ride through Los Angeles, a city better known for freeways, film sets of epic proportions, silicone implants, Governor Schwarzenegger, simulacra, Muscle Beach, Disneyland... for elevating the superficial to an art. But in the Mecca of the "Body Perfect," one in six couples are now infertile and Angelinos lead the world in the number of fertility clinics per capita. With no government regulation, L.A. is home to the world's largest egg donor agency, largest sperm bank, and largest surrogate mother agency. Nearly all their customers are wealthy, and almost all are white.

With the potential to screen for over 2,000 genetic diseases coming on line in the very near future, who would risk having imperfect children by way of recreational sex? And what corporation would insure them?

FROZEN ANGELS is a highly visual and stylized film, often more reminiscent of fiction or science fiction film than documentary: the fluid camera is almost always in motion on a steadicam, in automobiles, or helicopters, "Talking head" has been reduced to near zero and there is no narration. The characters tell their own conflicting stories and the viewer is asked to contemplate his/her own thoughts about the coming of the new eugenics and the sort of world we will leave for the children being created? No one's moral code is left unchallenged.

"the most chilling film on show this year is Eric Black and Frauke Sandig's Frozen Angels, which follows Los Angeles radio host and surrogate mother agency owner, Bill Handel as he seeks to show just how close we are to the age of designer babies, with all its terrifying eugenic consequences".    David Parkinson, BBC, London