I must admit I didn't know of this true-life story of hundreds of mostly orphaned young Jewish children from Nazi Germany being settled at different locations in Britain immediately after the end of the Second World War, with the bulk of them being taken to a settlement at the scenic Lake Windermere. Having known only terror and persecution and been forcibly separated from their families at some of the most infamous concentration camps, they face the challenge of adapting to life on their own in a new country with unfamiliar surroundings, a different language and not always friendly natives.
These are children naturally traumatised by their experiences, suffering from the memories of losing their loved ones and now facing new challenges to adapt to a wholly alien environment thrown together with like-situationed youngsters their own age they've mostly never met before. None of them speak English either and we see them undergoing a rudimentary education and other methods of acclimatisation all to help them adjust to a post-War world.
Under the benign patronage of the facility head, Oscar Friedmann, bearing a strong resemblance in fact to Liam Neeson's Oscar Schindler, and his support staff, most prominently featuring a female art teacher who encourages the children to express themselves in paint and a crusty old Scottish P.E. teacher keen to get a football team up to play the local boys, they gradually come round to accepting that they have a reason to live and can go forward with their lives. For some, this is more difficult to believe than others and there's a trenchant scene where they learn the official fate of their loved ones back home, via Red Cross notification although for one young boy there's a faint hope that his older brother may somehow still be alive.
Examples of familiar prejudices from some of the locals are shown too, plus some humour centring around the misadventures of a particular gang of four who raid the kitchen to enjoy some alfresco dining and also at the afore-mentioned football match which finally comes together. These lighter scenes are contrasted with others which remind us of the horrors the children have left behind, which we see in their reactions to the barking of even a small dog or to receiving a limitless supply of bread at breakfast as they immediately all run to hide the precious bounty away.
The film ended poignantly, again in "Schindler's List" fashion, with the depicted youngsters' real-life, now aged adult counterparts returning to the same spot over seventy years later with their own positive recollections of their time there.
This was a low-key production with several shots of the comfortingly beautiful Windermere landscape, a plaintive string quartet soundtrack, unobtrusive direction and fine ensemble acting by young and old alike, although perhaps some of the individual stories could have been developed a bit more and one wonders why there was no corresponding attention afforded to the young girls in their number.
Nevertheless,with refugee crises in different parts of the world today still an ongoing issue, this was a sympathetic thought-provoking treatment of the subject which hopefully will resonate with contemporary viewers.
