Orphan is a 2009 psychological thriller and horror film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, starring Isabelle Fuhrman, Aryana Engineer, Jimmy Bennett, Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard. The film centers on a couple who, after the death of their unborn child, adopt a mysterious nine-year old girl. Orphan was produced by Joel Silver and Susan Downey of Dark Castle Entertainment and Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson Killoran of Appian Way Productions. The film was released theatrically in the United States on July 24, 2009. The film received mixed critical reviews although Fuhrman's performance as Esther was acclaimed.

Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga) and her husband John (Peter Sarsgaard) are experiencing strains in their marriage after their third child was stillborn. The loss is particularly hard on Kate, who is also recovering from alcoholism. The couple decides to adopt a nine-year-old Russian girl, Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), from the local orphanage. While Kate and John's deaf daughter Max (Aryana Engineer) embraces Esther almost immediately, their son Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) is less welcoming.

An orphan film is a motion picture work that has been abandoned by its owner or copyright holder; also, any film that has suffered neglect.

The exact origin of the term orphan film is unclear. By the 1990s, however, film archivists were commonly using this colloquialism to refer to motion pictures abandoned by their owners. Before the end of the decade, the phrase emerged as the governing metaphor for film preservation, first in the United States, then internationally.

Historians and archivists define the term in both a narrow and a broad sense. A report from the Librarian of Congress, Film Preservation 1993, offered a first definition. As a category of so-called orphan works, orphan films are those “that lack either clear copyright holders or commercial potential” to pay for their preservation. However, a much wider group of works fall under the orphan rubric when the term is expanded to refer to all manner of films that have been neglected. The neglect might be physical (a deteriorated film print), commercial (an unreleased movie), cultural (censored footage) or historical (a forgotten World War I-era production).

Isabelle Fuhrman (born February 25, 1997) is an American actress. Fuhrman is best known for playing Esther in the 2009 horror film Orphan, and Clove, the female tribute from District Two, in The Hunger Games.

Fuhrman was born in Washington, D.C. on February 25, 1997 and raised in Atlanta. Her mother, Elina Fuhrman (née Kozmits), is a journalist who immigrated from Soviet Russia and has worked for CNN. Her father, Nick Fuhrman, is a former political candidate and business consultant. She has an older sister, Madeline Fuhrman, who is a singer and songwriter.

Fuhrman's acting career began at the age of seven, when a casting director from Cartoon Network spotted her waiting for her sister and cast her for one of the shows, Cartoon Fridays. Fuhrman made her big screen debut just a few years later in the 2007 drama Hounddog. The same year, Fuhrman was chosen to star in the movie Orphan alongside Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard. Fuhrman was cast through an exhaustive nationwide search of young actresses to portray the lead in the Warner Bros. collaboration between Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way and Joel Silver's Dark Castle Entertainment.