A Yenish boy is placed in a mental hospital and experiences the Nazi euthanasia program. Aware of what was happening and attached to friends, the lad attempts to sabotage the program. The film addresses the complexities of the program director, the lives of the child victims, and the struggles of the child protagonist. More than five thousand children died in the Nazi euthanasia program.
Acting
Ivo Pietzcker carries impossible weight with zero sentimentality.
Direction
Wessel refuses easy villains — even monsters get complexity.
Writing
The sabotage plot avoids triumphalism; resistance is small, desperate, human.
Director
Kai Wessel
Ivo Pietzcker
Ernst Lossa
Sebastian Koch
Dr. Werner Veithausen
Fritzi Haberlandt
Head nurse Sophia
Thomas Schubert
Paul Hechtle
Henriette Confurius
Edith Kiefer
Branko Samarovski
Max Witt
David Bennent
Oja
Karl Markovics
Christian Lossa
Jule Hermann
Nandl
Niklas Post
Josef
Patrick Heyn
Nazi
Juls Serger
Hermann Klein
Franziska Singer
Mrs. Klein
Arne Wichert
Toni
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Yenish people, a marginalized European ethnic group, were specifically targeted alongside disabled children — a dual erasure history barely acknowledges.
Director Kai Wessel fought for years to fund this; German TV initially balked at a 'depressing' Nazi film without heroic rescues.
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