Berlin

New York based director Ira Sachs returns to Berlin two years after Love is Strange with a coming of age story about friendship and the struggle of embracing adulthood. 

Little Men is an everyday story about two fourteen year old boys, Jake and Toni, who meet when the first moves with his family to a fast-developing Brooklyn neighbourhood. From the first moment it becomes prominent that the two boys are very different in character, with Jake being shy, creative and more intellectual, aspiring to become an artist, whereas Toni is a free spirit, less precise in his choices, and yet the greatest support for his single mother. 

But is is exactly these differences that seem to be bringing together the two boys who soon become inseparable, learning from each other’s dreams, experiences and the challenges of adolescence. 

Ira Sachs works out magnificently a way to transform another ordinary story to a powerful and emotional journey that manoeuvres from a light-hearted teenage drama to an extremely sophisticated zoom-in on family, relationships and adulthood. In Keep the lights on he focused on the relationship between two young men and in Love is strange he depicted the tender love story of an elderly gay couple in NYC. Going backwards, Little men explores the grounds of teenagehood relationships, while revising their newest guidelines and boundaries. 

In the world of 2016, where nothing is forbidden and the norms are shifting to new directions, and  in a city where opportunities are unlimited, Sachs is determined to show that childhood can still be innocent and life - surprising. And perhaps, although the way we form relationships still obeys to old-school rules, it is much easier to let go and forget. 

To that extend, the two families serve the story with their background interaction that will also become a resolution and a catalyst. When Toni’s mother is threatened by eviction from her shop, now belonging to Jake’s family, the two boys are forced to encounter adulthood for the first time and to take decisions that are beyond their reach. 

With young Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri taking the lead, Ira Sachs proves again his ability to make his characters being so important on their own, each sharing a personal story within the whole, and at the same time clicking together in a completely natural way. Simple reactions from the lead characters - the refusal to talk to the parents as a statement of protest, the fascination with discovering the life sooner than their age would allow - become significant parts of their self-discovery. 

The two little men turn against the current as a part of their attempt to find who they really are and where they belong. No matter what the result, the broader picture is telling of the ever-changing challenge of becoming an adult and what Ira Sachs has learned is that the journey is definitely more important, even if you have to start all over at the end of it. 

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Director Ira Sachs presented his film to the audience in Berlin and spoke about his two sons, who inspired the characters in Little Men. “It is exciting that they are now older and we can finally take them to the cinema.”, he admitted speaking about his family. 

On my question about the desire of children to be adults at an earlier stage in their life and how difficult it is to prevent this in the world of today, he replied: “Sometimes they really have to act as an adult. Other times, they are just kids. But what I think is that actually today, no matter what age we are, we are constantly on the verge of becoming somebody else.” 

The director was fascinated to make another film in NYC, and although it is always very difficult “we managed to create a calm atmosphere in such a chaotic place. I am proud to have worked with a great team once again.”