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Autumn 1942, South of France. Maria Von Gall carries on a struggle against Nazism with an almost crazed courage. She organizes the flight of Jews and other persecuted people using funds, which have been deposited in Switzerland by German Jews. Sensing she is about to be discovered, she entrusts to her young son’s prodigious memory the list with the information and access codes for the 740 million marks deposited in Switzerland. Thomas, eleven, is left alone to fight the battle against the “evil” as it is embodied in Gregor Laemmle, a philosophy professor the Reich blackmailed into getting the information to access the Swiss accounts of the German Jews. Thomas and Gregor confront each other as in a cruel chess game - full of escapes, traps, chases, carried on with trickery, intelligence and fear - between good and evil, between the world of infancy that Thomas cannot live anymore and the world of adults that presents itself to him in its worst and meanest guise. Fatally, Thomas falls one day into the hands of Gregor Laemmle. Maria decides to hand herself in exchange of the child’s freedom. Before doing so, however, she calls, after eleven years of silence, to David Quattermain, Thomas’ father, and reveals to him the existence of his son, imploring him to come to his rescue.

France / Germany - 2002 - 2 x 1 h 30 - 35 mm - Colour

Director Giacomo Battiato Script Giacomo Battiato, Nicola Lusuardi Camera Florian Ballhaus Sound Mike Shoring Sets Christian Marti Editing Scott Stevenson Music Gert Wilden Cast Klaus Maria Brandauer, Giavenne Mezzorgiono, Thomas Sangster, Stephen Moyer

Production Le Sabre Co-Production UFA Munich

Sales Le Sabre