Children of the storm

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Movie
Original title Children of the storm
Country of production Germany , Austria
original language German
Publishing year 2009
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Miguel Alexandre
script Gabriela Sperl
production Gabriela Sperl
music Dominik Roth
camera Busso from Müller
cut Tobias Forth
occupation

The film Children of the Storm is a historical drama of Miguel Alexandre from the year 2009 . The television production was first broadcast on ARD on March 25, 2009. It tells the story of a displaced family in Germany of the post-war period . A child is lost on the run and is only found again after years of searching.

action

The young widow Rosemarie Hermann is with her sister Bettina, her father and their two children Maria and Johannes ("Jojo") at the beginning of 1945 on the flight from Silesia back to Germany. In the general chaos she loses her daughter. Because of the crowd, Rosemarie has no chance of getting off the train that is supposed to bring the refugees to Germany. She has to watch helplessly as the train starts moving and Maria stays behind at the station without her family. Arrived in southern Germany and placed in an emergency shelter in Stuttgart, Rosemarie does everything to find Maria again. She goes to the tracing center of the German Red Cross almost every day , but even after five months there is no trace of Maria. The child was not part of any of the announced Kindertransport. Rosemary's persistence impressed Harald Bergmann, a new employee in the tracing service who was transferred to the office after being injured in the war. He therefore gives her a job in his work group so that she can continue searching herself and also has access to all possible information and incoming reports.

Maria longs for her family as much as her mother. She had been taken to a children's home near Lübeck . Since this area belongs to the British zone of occupation and there is only very limited cooperation between the zones of the various occupying powers, Maria's name is never on a list of the American zone of occupation, to which Stuttgart belongs. Nevertheless, the child waits patiently for her mother to come to pick her up. Her best friend Kathi was this lucky, which now means for Maria that she has to say goodbye to her friend with a heavy heart. As a result, she becomes seriously ill and has a high fever. Your supervisor Jutta König is committed to ensuring that Maria is not brought to the hospital so that she does not get infected with typhus there . She also lets Kathi come, who should revive the sick girl's spirits through her visit.

In her search for Maria, Rosemarie is always worried that she is neglecting her little Jojo too much. Again and again she has to leave him in the care of her sister when she spends hours with the authorities. Thanks to Bettina's new friend Günther, the Hermanns can leave the emergency shelter and move to a farm, where they can also work and always get enough to eat.

In the meantime there is also the possibility of posting search reports on the radio, which Rosemarie uses immediately, but again does not bring any success. In this way, she concentrates her energy on her new job in the tracing service center and quickly finds an improvement, which, however, involves a lot of effort. She advocates that the index cards are copied several times so that they can be sent to all occupation zones. In addition, she is developing new criteria by which children can be identified if no photos are available. With this system, the search reports now reach the whole country and also as far north as Lübeck.

First, however, a Maria Hermann is reported as having no parents in Regensburg and Rosemarie goes there immediately. The disappointment is great when the reported girl is not her Maria. Gradually she doubts that she will ever find her daughter again.

Jutta König has meanwhile been entrusted with the entire management of the children's home and since Maria was always close to her heart, she can assign one of the new search messages to the girl. She replies to the search query and informs little Maria of her new whereabouts, who has been living in a foster family for a few weeks. However, Rosemary is afraid of being disappointed again. In addition, little Jojo had a swimming accident, which shows her that she must not neglect the boy any further.

Harald Bergmann, with whom Rosemarie has become friends over time, tries to comfort her and does not encourage her to give up. Together they go to Northern Germany, but have to find out from the foster family that Marie ran away a few days earlier. Despite all the efforts, the girl was unable to settle in and wanted to look for her real mother on her own. Harald finds newspaper clippings under Maria's bed about search reports from lost children that she must have collected over weeks. Since Nordradio is currently carrying out a search, Rosemarie and Harald go there and hope to be able to start a call at the end of the broadcast. But the show is already running and there is little hope of success for the two. Suddenly Rosemarie hears her daughter's voice. Maria actually managed to find her way here all by herself and to bring her search message to the microphone. After almost 3 years, mother and daughter are overjoyed and only separated by a pane of glass.

criticism

filmdienst assessed the film as "a (television) melodrama about a refugee's fate, which is symptomatic of life in post-war Germany, but leveled out to the current narrative through pathetic dialogues, maudlin lovelies and highly dramatic side scenes."

Rainer Tittelbach from tittelbach.tv rated: “It is this universal exceptional situation and the audience's willingness to feel that come together in this seemingly truthful, not too exaggerated television film. Felicitas Woll played a major role in this effect. As an over-serious mother, she embodies the absolute opposite of her fun-loving 'Lolle' from the cult series ' Berlin, Berlin '. She finds the tone and the physicality of the clever post-war generation even more believable than in ' Dresden '. You believe her role - and even more: it leads you safely through the emotional roller coaster. "

At Kino.de , Tilmann P. Gangloff judged : "Children of the storm [...] impresses more with an artfully designed surface that strives for authenticity than with powerful figures." Nevertheless, "Thanks to the excellent leadership of the young Magali Greif [...] the narrative thread very touching indeed with Maria. The adult part of the story, on the other hand, is largely predictable. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rainer Tittelbach : After "Dresden", Felicitas Woll impresses again in a historical role on tittelbach.tv , accessed on May 20, 2019.
  2. ^ Tilmann P. Gangloff : Filmkritik bei Kino.de , accessed on May 20, 2019.