(The Island on Bird Street)
Last year, Polish and Jewish author Uri Orlev was awarded the Danish Hans Christian Andersen Prize, but except for the happy ending - he is now living in Israel with his wife and four children - his life has been far from a fairy tale.
His mother was killed and his father left him in the Warsaw ghetto, and at 12, he and his younger brother were smuggled out and hidden by Polish families. In 1943, the Nazis found them and sent them both to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Two years later, on a train with an unknown destination, they were freed by the US Army.
'But this is not just another Holocaust epic. It could have happened at any time and anywhere in the world,' says Danish director Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, 50, about Øen i fuglegaden (The Island on Bird Street), his first English-language feature, from Orlev's autobiographical novel. 'Basically, the portrait of 12-year-old Alex - as he is called in the film - is the story of a survivor, with both Dickens and Hugo in it. During five months in the Warsaw ghetto, he is kept alive by the hope that his father will return. Their lives have been hell during Nazi anti-semitism. But like most children, he understands how to live in the present and squeeze a little optimism out of the most hopeless situations.'
Five years after Drengene fra Sankt Petri (The Boys from St Petri) - and after 19 local awards, mainly for his children's films - Kragh-Jacobsen is back, 'not with a film for children, but with a film for everybody with a child in the lead.' Danish veteran producer Tivi Magnusson, who co-produced Drengene fra Sankt Petri as well as earlier Kragh-Jacobsen features, set up the Danish-UK-German venture with an 11-year-old Manchester boy, Jordan Kiziuk, Patrick Bergin (Sleeping with the Enemy) and Jack Warden (most recently Mighty Aphrodite) in the leads. The US$10 million was shot at locations in Poland and Germany.
Jørn Rossing Jensen
Regie (Dir): Søren Kragh-Jacobsen
Buch (Scr): John Goldsmith, Tony Grisoni, nach dem Buch von Uri Orlev
Darsteller (Cast): Patrick Bergin, Jordan Kiziuk, Jack Warden, Stefan Sauk, Simon Gregor, Lee Ross, Michael Byrne, Suzanna Hamilton
Länge (Running time): 107 Minuten
[Home ] [Content ] [The Sponsors ] [The Team ] [Comments ] [Help ]
