Movielogr
Children of the Open Road (1992)
Directed by Urs Egger
Overview
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.
Length 117 minutes
Actors
Jasmin Tabatabai | Andrea Eckert | Hans-Peter Korff | Nina Petri | Wolf-Dietrich Berg | Herbert Leiser | Mathias Gnädinger | Noemi Steuer | Johanna Karl-Lory