White Bird 2023
2h 1m | Biography, Drama, Family, War | Release date: October 4, 2024 (United States)
Storyline:
In R. J. Palacio’s bestselling collection of stories Auggie and Me, which expands on characters in Wonder, readers were introduced to Julian’s grandmother, Grandmère. Here, Palacio makes her graphic novel debut with Grandmère’s heartrending story: how she, a young Jewish girl, was hidden by a family in a Nazi-occupied French village during World War II; how the boy she and her classmates once shunned became her savior and best friend.
I bambini di Gaza – Sulle onde della libertà 2024
1h 30m | Drama | Release date: March 28, 2024 (Italy)
Storyline:
In the midst of the war in Gaza during the Second Intifada in 2003, two boys, one Palestinian and one Israeli, along with a former surfing champion, form a friendship united by the love of water and learn from each other.
Using his own terminology, Billy Pilgrim is “unstuck in time”, which means he is moving between different points in his life uncontrollably, although he is aware of it at certain of those points as witnessed by the letter to the editor he writes to the Ilium Daily News about his situation. Primarily, he is moving between three general time periods and locations. The first is his stint as a GI during WWII, when, as a pacifist, he was acting as a Chaplain’s assistant for his unit. This time is largely as a POW, where he was in Dresden the day of the bombing, spending it with among others an older compassionate GI named Edgar Derby, and a brash loudmouth GI named Paul Lazzaro. The second is his life as an optometrist in Ilium in upstate New York, eventually married to the wealthy and overbearing Valencia Merble, and having two offspring, Robert, who would spend his teen-aged years as a semi-delinquent, and Barbara, who would end up much like her mother. And the third is as an abductee on the planet Tralfamadore, along with his devoted dog Spot, and Hollywood starlet Montana Wildhack – who was not averse to taking off her clothes to further her career – the Tralfamadorians who have put them on display. The more time he spends on Tralfamadore, the more he understands the meaning of what is happening to him.
Song of the South 2023
Dat Rung Phuong Nam (original title)
1h 50m | Drama, War | Release date: October 20, 2023 (Vietnam)
Storyline:
Song of the South (Dat Rung Phuong Nam) is based on the same name novel written by Author Doan Gioi. It’s a serial journey of a lost boy, named An, who experiences various adventures and tragedies on his way to looking for his father.
The Tale of the Three Lost Jewels 1995
Hikayatul jawahiri thalath (original title)
1h 52m | Drama, Romance, War | Release date: December 6, 1995 (France)
Storyline:
A Palestinian boy becomes entranced with a beautiful Gypsy girl and a fairy tale world she weaves amidst conflict in Gaza. The children explore nature, mysticism and what their future holds, while learning to live with the surrounding brutality c. 1990. Yusef’s family scrapes by in a seaside camp while his father’s in prison and his heavily-armed brother’s on the run, parrying with Israeli troops. Salah, Yusef’s schoolmate from a well-off Arab family strives faithfully to assist them, while Yusef helps an elderly, blind neighbor escape from his lonely abandonment into the North American dreamworld he’s waited so long for.
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.
