Edges of the Lord - Lost Children of War

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Movie
German title Edges of the Lord - Lost Children of War
Original title Edges of the Lord
Country of production Poland , United States
original language English
Publishing year 2001
length 95 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Jurek Bogajewicz
script Jurek Bogajewicz
production Zev Brown ,
Philip Krupp ,
Avi Lerner
music Jan AP Kaczmarek
camera Paweł Edelman
cut Dennis M. Hill
occupation

The film Edges Of The Lord is a war drama set in 1943 by Jurek Bogajewicz .

Synopsis

1943 - The Nazis occupied Poland. To save him from the Nazis, a Jewish intellectual couple sends their 11-year-old son Romek to a peasant family, into which he is introduced as a distant cousin by Gniecio. The local priest takes care of the sensitive boy and teaches him the Catholic faith to protect him from the Nazis. Initially, however, Romek encountered hatred and harassment in Gniecio's family from Władek, who was of the same age.

action

Gnieco Romek smuggles Romek from Krakow to his home village in eastern Poland in a potato sack . As soon as he arrives, Romek learns Władek's hatred for him. The family finds it difficult to take him in. However, Tolo, Gniecio's youngest son, quickly becomes friends with Romek.
Again and again the children have to experience the tyranny of the Nazis . For example, they observe how the Germans force the priest, whose name is not found out during the film, to humiliatingly catch a few pigs in order to save the lives of two people, which he fails to do. Władek's hatred of Romek intensifies when his girlfriend Maria breaks up with him to be with Romek. Only when Władek's father is shot in town can he and Romek approach each other.

The priest gives the children an apostle game as an "exercise" for their first communion. From that moment on, Tolo will probably get his strange ideas. He discovers parallels to his life and that of Jesus and finally believes that he himself is Jesus . So he hangs himself from a tree, believing that this will bring his late father back. He also wears a wreath of thorns once.

The village is near a track leading west to Auschwitz . In response to the sentence “And you should have been on these trains a long time ago”, Romek goes to this railway line and learns what is happening to the Jews . The next day he went to the priest and found out involuntarily that the neighbor Kluba knew about his true parentage and that Kluba was the murderer of Władek's father.
After an argument with Robal - Kluba's son - Władek and Romek follow him into the woods at night to find out what he does every night: robbing Jews who have fled the trains. A remark from Romek makes Robal suspect that Romek knows more than he should. This is followed by a short fight and Robal then rapes the defenseless and half-conscious Maria.

After confession to the priest, Władek and Romek follow Robal again, this time armed. In pure revenge for the murder of his father and the rape of Maria, Władek finally shoots Robal. The resulting noise attracts Germans. Władek manages to escape, but Romek reacts a moment too late and is discovered by the Germans. The Nazi officer completely misunderstands the situation - he thinks Romek is robbing the Jews - and takes him to the nearest point where the Jews are loaded onto the trains. There he is supposed to search the Jews for valuables for the Nazis' pleasure. Władek, who came to help Romek, is caught by a German soldier and freed by Romek. He helped him in the forest. Shortly afterwards, Tolo appears in the crowd. He consciously denies any relationship or acquaintance with the other two and is loaded onto the train, which means certain death for him.

The film ends with the communion of the remaining children and a secret act of tolerance by the priest towards Romek: he is the only one who does not receive a consecrated host on his tongue, but a remnant of the host.

criticism

“Conceived as a multi-layered narrative about the Holocaust, the film fails because of conventional photography and simple staging. Despite convincing child actors, the ambitious juxtaposition of the initiation story and religious discussions, war drama and psychological attempts at explanation suffers from a lack of stringency. "

- Lexicon of international film

Awards

  • Best script - recipient: Jurek Bogajewicz (awarded by the Polish Film Festival)

Others

  • Jurek Bogajewicz's research into the development of the characters is based on children's diaries and memories of survivors of that time
  • 1st day of shooting: May 1st, 2000
  • Production time: 3 years

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edges of the Lord - Lost Children of War. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used