Anticipation is a fundamental part of childhood, a state of being that fuses imagination with feeling. It is the restless wait before a gift is opened, the thrill of looking forward to a game, but also the quiet hope for a tomorrow that feels safer and brighter. To anticipate is to lean into the future, to live inside possibility.

This two-minute documentary, filmed at a shelter in Krfska Street, turns its attention to children whose lives are marked by instability yet still infused with this capacity to dream. In their voices, we hear both the ordinary and the essential: the wish to become a football player, a teacher, a baker, or simply to have a home. These declarations of hope become a testament to their resilience and their refusal to let circumstance dictate the boundaries of their imagination.

The children cover their faces with their hands throughout the film, a gesture I suggested, but one they embraced as their own. This act of self-censorship is also an act of agency: by hiding their faces, they decide how they will be seen. They deny us the comfort of gazing upon their vulnerability and instead direct our attention to their words. What might appear as absence is in fact presence; what seems like concealment becomes empowerment.

Anticipation: Children’s Wishes asks us to listen rather than look, to measure the weight of a child’s desire for future against the fragility of their present. It reminds us that anticipation is not simply waiting, it is a form of survival, a radical insistence on tomorrow.