Long wanted serial killer Gabriel Engel gets arrested in a spectacular police strike. Small town cop Michael Martens travels to the big city to interrogate him. He associates a brutal murder case with the killer’s method and hopes to close the case by getting a confession from Engel. Instead the clash of the two totally opposite characters shakes Michaels beliefs to the ground, turning him into a dangerous threat, an enemy to the people around him.
Rapito 2023
2h 14m | Drama, History | Release date: May 25, 2023 (Italy)
Storyline:
The story of Edgardo Mortara, a young Jewish boy living in Bologna, Italy, who in 1858, after being secretly baptized, was forcibly taken from his family to be raised as a Christian. His parents’ struggle to free their son became part of a larger political battle that pitted the papacy against forces of democracy and Italian unification.
Too Little for Such a Big War 1970
Prea mic pentru un razboi atît de mare (original title)
1h 17m | Drama, War | Release date: February 3, 1970 (Romania)
Storyline:
A young boy becomes callous to the deaths and battles that rage during World War II.
Astrakan 2022
1h 44m | Drama | Release date: February 8, 2023 (France)
Storyline:
David Depesseville takes a largely observational approach to the story of young Samuel (Mirko Giannini), a traumatized orphan on the cusp of teenagehood trying to adjust to life with his new, rural foster family, headed by the overwhelmed but sympathetic Marie (Jehnny Beth) and the violent Clément (Bastien Bouillon). With an elliptical approach, Depesseville gently touches upon Samuel’s difficulties coming to terms with his remote substitute parents and brothers, his sexual awakening with the girl next door, and, most disturbingly, the improper attention Marie’s troubled brother seems to devote to the boys. With a gentle, unhurried, but compelling style, Depesseville transports the viewer into the boy’s mundane world, while, in a bold stylistic move, also offering the possibility for the child’s spiritual transcendence.
Germania anno zero 1948
1h 18m | Drama, History, War | Release date: February 2, 1949 (France)
Storyline:
Edmund, a young boy who lives in war-devastated Germany after the Second World War, must do all kinds of work to help his family get food and survive. One day he meets one of his former teachers and hopes to get support from him, but this man’s ideas don’t lead Edmund into a clearer or safer way of living.
Rolltreppe Abwärts 2005
1h 11m | Drama | Release date: August 3, 1990 (West Germany)
Storyline:
13-year-old Joham lives with his single mother and her boyfriend somewhere in a poor area of modern Germany. Having no pocket money, he sometimes resorts to petty theft. His older buddy incites him to bigger thefts, and in the end the boy gets caught…
The Railway Children 1970
1h 49m | Drama, Family | Release date: December 22, 1970 (United Kingdom)
Storyline:
In Edwardian England, the story of the Waterbury family is told largely from the perspective of the three offspring and by oldest, teenage daughter Bobbie. Their loving and relatively affluent family life in suburban London, financially supported by father Charles’ job as a government bureaucrat, includes both parents being a present and welcome part of their children’s activities. Their existence is upended when on Christmas evening 1904, Charles is whisked away without warning by two men. Subsequently, the remaining family is forced to move, they renting a rundown and drafty house, Three Chimneys, in the rural village of Oakworth, Yorkshire. While the three children know that they are now poor by their existence, all their Mother has told Bobbie is that Father is not dead, that he will someday return to them when he is able, and for Bobbie and the others not to ask questions about what happened to him. The three are now forced to find a way to occupy their time while Mother tries to earn pocket money by writing and selling stories, many of their activities which are centered on the railway near their house and the railway tunnel a few miles away from the village station. Their life along the railway at least addresses one of the complaints the three had about their life in London, that not much ever happened, which is not the case along the railway as they get into one adventure after another. In the process, they learn to enjoy life in their new situation, which includes the friendship and admiration of many of the villagers in all the Waterburys’ inherent kindness and generosity. But the question still remains, at least for the three children, of what happened to Father.
