A different approach

Rating: 7/10 (25 January 2009)

I hope they will always, but always, make films about the worst crime that human being have ever imagined against each other.
The Holocaust is a difficult subject and here we get a different approach: an eight year old moved away from his friends, as his father becomes commandant of a concentration camp, is left friendless and bored.
He explores and befriends through the barbed wire a Jewish boy - and it their friendship that is the film's fulcrum.
As with most BBC productions the production values are excellent, and it looks and feels right, especially the Bauhaus.
The last 15 minutes are very moving and well done and the rest of the film builds well; though the mother's sympathies were unrealistic in the main and we thought it would have been stronger if she had been different.
All in all a good film approaching a very difficult subject and moving in a different way.