"Nothing says happy Hanukah like a Holocaust-themed movie, especially if it ends on a feelgood note of survival and reunion after a run of tragic deaths and lashings of suffering. But this Israeli-Belarusian co-production is so excessively sentimental, cliche-riddled and arguably hypocritical considering its provenance, it's not easy to forbear. It opens in contemporary Tel Aviv with an elderly man named Ilya receiving news he can barely believe is true: someone dear to him from his childhood is alive."
"After a spell in a concentration camp for children, Ilya is separated from his brother and ends up living with a Belarusian couple who lost their own son. Despite the risk of execution they're incurring by sheltering a Jewish boy, the couple treat Ilya like their own son, and the man gives him a home-whittled wooden stork that Ilya promises to give to his little brother one day."
The film opens in contemporary Tel Aviv with elderly Ilya learning that someone from his childhood may be alive, prompting him to recount his wartime past. Flashbacks show preteen Jewish brothers in Minsk as war begins, their father gone and the family rounded up by Nazis. One recurring German actor symbolizes the occupying forces. Ilya survives a children’s concentration camp, becomes separated from his brother, and is sheltered by a Belarusian couple who lost their son. The couple treats Ilya as their own and gives him a home-whittled wooden stork, which he vows to return to his brother.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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