Kinder der Landstrasse
Switzerland,
1992, 117 min
Shown in 1993
CREDITS
- dir
-
Urs Egger
- prod
-
Johannes Bösiger, Peter Spoerri
- scr
-
Johannes Bösiger
- cam
-
Lukas Strebel
- editor
-
Barbara Hennings
- cast
-
Jasmin Tabatabai, Georg Friedrich, Hans Peter Kroff, Herbert Leiser, Andrea Eckert
- prod co
-
Panorama Films
- source
-
Metropolis Film World Sales
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Urs Egger in person.
OTHER
In 1939, after barely escaping the Nazis, a Gypsy family returns to Switzerland only to be torn apart by racial persecution in the benign guise of children's welfare. This fictionalized story of Jana, an eight-year-old Gypsy girl snatched from her parents and consigned to a life of orphanages and bleak foster homes, is based on a little-known chapter of Swiss history: From 1926 to 1972, the state-supported Pro Juventute, a children's aid foundation, forcibly removed some 700 Gypsy children from their families, in order to sever the ties with their culture and assimilate them to a "better way of life." The underlying aim was to preempt a new generation's caravans from following their nomadic traditions along Switzerland's country lanes. With refreshing clarity, director Urs Egger's straightforward storytelling serves the film well as cinematic drama, as do fine, naturalistic performances, especially by Jasmin Tabatabi who plays the teenage Jana with determined if bewildered candor. Though grown sad-eyed, tough and wary after years as a ward of the state, she retains her yearning for love and family and struggles to unloose the bonds of the system's hypocritical values. The family's near escape from the Nazis in the beginning casts an ironic light on the film. Whether it comes at the hands of the executioner or by the edicts of the self-righteous bureaucrat, cultural annihilation is the ultimate goal of racism.
—Alicia Springer
FACTOID #202
At the 1978 SFIFF, Paul Mazursky received a tribute at the Palace of Fine Arts. Apparently, the facility’s janitorial staff had not been notified, and the padlocked doors of the Palace had to be cut so the filmmaker and his audience could be let in.
