Film > World Cinema - Contemporary

Based on the true story of a young Polish-German Jew who survived the Holocaust by falling in with the Hitler Youth, Europa, Europa is a heartbreaking tale of a boy’s chameleon-like ability to endure the horrors of World War 11. Solly, a young teen when the Holocaust begins, leaps naked out a bathroom window as the SS breaks into his family's home. Thereafter he embarks on a picaresque journey through the atrocities of wartime Europe, adopting various life-saving identities, from a member of a Communist orphanage to leader of a Hitler Youth group. Acclaimed director Agnieszka Holland (Three Colours Blue) embellishes this bleak tale with dashes of irony, and humour, including surreal dream sequences featuring Hitler and Stalin joined in a waltz. A fascinating personal memoir, Europa Europa is also a detailed historical chronicle of a devastating war and the monster ideologies that fuelled it.