An Albanian father and young son have just left war-torn Macedonia for Venice, Italy. Sadly, the father has little money and can't care for the boy so he abandons him by running away--and the boy desperately goes in search of the guy. A nice young nun finds the boy but she is frustrated that no one seems to care about the boy. In the meantime, the father has second thoughts and returns for his kid but is captured by police. Eventually the two are reunited in a rather sad scene. The film ends with their being deported back to a land that doesn't want them. All in all, an amazingly depressing but compelling film--made better through excellent music and style.
3 Reviews
poetic
Kirpianuscus4 August 2018
Well crafted. poetic. escaping from the temptation of sentimental short ways. a boy. his father. a young nun. in Venice. the war. the desire of better life. and the temptation to abandone the boy. a film who could be defined as warning, remember, wise exploration of fatherhood or onlly a sad short film. in fact, it represent only a touching picture of near reality. from today and for each period. about things out of words. but essentials.
Craft and weight
Polaris_DiB21 May 2007
Warning: Spoilers
This is an okay short. It manages, despite a lot of heavy-handed sentimental attempts otherwise, to provide at moments empathy for the father-son pair who have escaped war-torn Macedonia only to deal with personal threat. It's the story of a father and his son who find themselves in Venice, homeless and poor, decrepit and alone, and wondering what the future can hold. The father decides to try to abandon the son, but things don't work out as either expect and they soon find themselves wandering the empty streets looking for each other, hopelessly.
It's packed with weight of emotion and grief, but only sometimes does it come off as touching and tragic. The short itself suffers from some needless diversions that serve only to make the search longer. In theory, the increased length might be there to increase the sense of separation, but it doesn't do too well at that... there's always the sense that the two will just meet each other around a corner (and they do!).
But films like these don't exist for their dramatic impact, they are more about revealing the state of a certain culture through story. This film isn't all that bad--it has heart and importance.
--PolarisDiB
It's packed with weight of emotion and grief, but only sometimes does it come off as touching and tragic. The short itself suffers from some needless diversions that serve only to make the search longer. In theory, the increased length might be there to increase the sense of separation, but it doesn't do too well at that... there's always the sense that the two will just meet each other around a corner (and they do!).
But films like these don't exist for their dramatic impact, they are more about revealing the state of a certain culture through story. This film isn't all that bad--it has heart and importance.
--PolarisDiB
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