The Cloetes have basically sacrificed their own lives to save these desperate children, and their commitment is staggering. Hogarth's cameras capture the day-to-day strife and joy of Marion and her family's ongoing mission with a vibrant, stirring intimacy. The director explores a marginalized world that few filmmakers have ever entered and she should be applauded for helping to expose one of society's greatest ongoing tragedies.

The documentary makes abundantly clear how poverty and a lack of education, plus a reliance on fear, superstition and other archaic influences, have factored in to the explosion of AIDS in South Africa. A dearth of effective government involvement has apparently also contributed to the crisis; the country's much-maligned Minister of Health once recommended an unfounded dietary regimen to arrest the virus, instead of a strict medicinal protocol. Compounding the situation is the widespread rape of innocent young girls (some barely older than toddlers) by their AIDS-infected fathers and other male family members, as well as a proliferation of multiple sex partners by so many HIV-positive men.

Many of the children living and learning in the Cloetes' orphanage are interviewed by Hogarth and, while their stories are heartbreaking, their strength, clarity, and good cheer is astonishing. Marion's support of each of these youngsters is endlessly remarkable—as is her unbridled energy. When she has to battle several of her students' troubled, horribly misguided parents, she does so without demonization or fury (well, maybe once), but rather a fierce determination to do what's best for the kids. Marion's moments coercing several dying AIDS victims to seek real medical help instead of simply giving up are also incredible to behold.

All that said, the film loses focus—and a bit of steam—as it goes along, eschewing an organized narrative for a more episodic, diffused approach. It might have held together better if Hogarth told this gripping story even more exclusively from Marion's point of view, giving the ex-therapist her own specific and revealing throughline. Unfortunately, as much as we come to know her for her great work and amazing deeds, we never get a complete sense of Marion as her own, fully dimensional person. At this point, there may be no separating this extraordinary woman from her life's calling, but there's definitely more about her to mine.

There's also a prevailing sunniness to the project that works both for and against it. While this optimism helps make the grim subject matter more accessible, it occasionally tempers some of the far grittier realities, particularly how so many South African men contracted HIV to begin with. The physical and financial mechanics of operating the orphanage also get short shrift.

In addition, though an upbeat visit to a national park that's home to a herd of once-endangered elephants offers a nice reflection of Marion's "re-parenting" work at Boikarabelo, it ultimately feels more extraneous than essential.

Nonetheless, Angels in the Dust is an important, enormously emotional film that will hopefully have a far-reaching and valuable impact on the plight of Sub-Saharan AIDS.