While Vanya frets over this dilemma, the movie goes about depicting orphanage life in a clear-eyed, matter-of-fact way that shows both the indignities and the strangely heartwarming familial nature of the place. A sort of underground mafia of older children runs a black-market economy, and the overseers seem more concerned with how to wring money out of the children (from, say, well-off Italians) than with how to treat them well. But the ringleader of the older kids' gang gives Vanya some touching advice about why he shouldn't go looking into his past, and an older girl (who works, it appears, as a prostitute for passing truckers) agrees to teach him how to read.
This sober and realistic portrayal skirts some Oliver Twist edges but ultimately shows the way that people do what they can within a deeply flawed system, and depicts the daily lives of Vanya and his cohorts as tough but manageable, as they make the best of what's given them. That is, until Vanya up and escapes from the orphanage to track down his mother, and the film becomes a silly, clever-kid-outwits-clueless-adults movie, with an absurdly happy ending that undercuts all the grittiness that director Kravchuk has established.
Even throughout that second half, though, there are moments that illustrate the alternately indifferent and engaged attitudes of those Vanya encounters along his search, and Kravchuk's depiction of Russian working-class life rings true, most of the time, up until the final freeze-frame.