By Lucinda Breeding
For Local Spin

It would have been easy for the filmmakers of Moving On to botch the documentary about David and Morgan Hansow's life-changing decision to travel to Uganda to adopt one of Africa's millions of orphans.

All the ingredients for turning off an audience were there: the squeaky-clean Christian couple; imperiled Ugandan women and children; and you're average, garden-variety American knowledge of ongoing African crises and violence. You know the drill. Well-groomed white folks cross the North Atlantic to show third world Africans how to do life right.

But director Matt Katsolis handled the story with care and intelligence. And David and Morgan Hansow are anything put paternalistic white kids out to show Ugandans the error of their ways.

The story is both simple and thrilling. The Hansows are button-cute high school sweethearts who marry at 19, go to college and start a family. None of this makes for an easy young adulthood, but the Hansows are hard workers and eternal optimists. Morgan hears a radio ad about international adoption, and feels that part of her path is in Uganda, a place she's never been or thought much about. She convinces David, and they begin looking for a child they will adopt. The Hansows never accuse the Ugandan authorities of corruption, but there is evidence, nonetheless, and bureaucratic snarls convince the couple to take their young son and move to Uganda, where they hope to adopt the precious infant girl, Jadyn. Jadyn is precious, wearing a big grin and flashing enormous brown eyes at the couple every time they visit the orphanage.

The Hansows meet and hire the indomitable housekeeper Betty. Pregnant, impoverished and desperate, Betty walks through the Hansow's Jinja neighborhood, asking for work at the gates of every house she passes. Thus begins a deep friendship that eventually feeds Light Gives Heat, the nonprofit the Hansows started before leaving the U.S. The agency is meant to lead the couple into the community, where they assess the needs of the Africans they live among -- as partners with their Ugandan neighbors. The partners create Suubi, a line of necklaces made by local women who turn used paper into beads and jewelry. New relationships lead to a line of handmade bags under the brand EPOH. Light Gives Heat booms, and the Hansows run distribution from a modest office in Colorado.

Katsolis captured some of the finest cinematography yet seen at Thin Line Film Fest, and he weaves the stories of the resourceful and happy Ugandans into the Hansow's story seamlessly.

Moving On is a fascinating reflection on faith, serendipity and the many kinds of love that human beings can discover -- if they're up for enormous risk and all its attendant pain.