An entire day's worth of film was accidentally left in a New York City taxicab. The film was never recovered.
This is a remake of the French movie Little Indian, Big City (1994). The plot follows the original fairly closely, except that the original was set in Paris rather than New York, and Mimi-Siku climbed the Eiffel Tower rather than the Statue of Liberty.
In addition to relocating from Paris to New York, the character Mimi-Siku was made much older than the preteen in the French version. This was largely due to Americans' general discomfort with young love, under the explanation that "a teenager can get into more trouble." Additionally, despite American Mimi-Siku's having lived in the wild, there's less difference in the skin tones of the two male leads than in the original French film. This was done to emphasize their kinship.