b-13616

The moment I heard melancholy piano instrumental played on the background, I felt to be pulled by a film. From a German language actress speaks and her serious reaction to the missing son, I soon noticed it is a story about The Holocaust. At first, it is slightly difficult to follow the story, because it is told from two perspectives of German mother and David, her son, in two timelines. The first scene starts with David's mother going to find David, who is seemingly captured by SS. In the next scene of David and Heinrich playing the piano together, we finally understand why David is missing. One of the most impressive moments is the interaction between the mother and David. The mother cannot honestly tell David the cruel truth about entrainment of Jewish, and instead lies that they will go to "Toyland." Watching unsatisfied David and the conversation between David and Heinrich, Jewish friend of David, we come to see why David vanishes from his bed. On the latter part, I was really thrilled by the struggle to reach David by his mother. In every sequence such as finding the teddy bear, being suspected as Jewish by the police, and final arrival to the train where David is, the contents are considerably concentrated, and I couldn't avert my eyes.

This story is about a typical misunderstanding of the main character and teases her unconscious prejudice toward others. It consists of a minimal extent of dialogues between characters, monochrome visual, and classical music, and so audiences can enjoy how the woman, main character, is changing by an unexpected encounter in only around 10 minutes. It starts from the scene at the crowded central station and the woman is rushing for her train. On the way to the platform, she runs into a black guy and refuses his help, though he seems to be a kind person. In spite of the effort to hurry along, she misses her train and even drops tears! It seems so over reaction and is one of the funniest moments for me in this film. But except that, she is full of prejudice towards other races, too naïve, and also gets on people's nerves. So I did not assume that I come to like her slightly more compared with in the beginning. Through the interaction with a black guy, who are "stealing" her salad at her seat, however, she starts to take a step to change (I do not want to say she has changed through the film, rather she seizes the opportunity). The scene of sharing salad, and then buying a coffee without any conversation is so lovely that I got disappointed when finding both take no action to each other.

This is one of the most favorite short films in my life. It starts from the scene on the boat - the boat with a boy, father, and grandfather goes on a silent, calm night ocean. The sounds of Spanish guitar is romantic, and I was attracted from the first moment. The little boy is always middle of his father and grandfather, and tries to behave like adults - so I can easily suppose it is a story of boy's growth. But the way to express it is really breathtaking! When the full moon rises, adults slowly prepare to climb to the moon! With the help of the anchor and ladder, the boy arrives at the moon, where lots of little star covers the surface. Again, I have never seen such an expression for the moon, and it tells us the image of warm, bright, and even cozy place for the moon, it is so surprising. While caught in a dilemma between the way of father and grandfather, they find a huge shooting star is coming. In an attempt to put it off, the boy finally finds his way to achieve the task. We do not have the answer to the question "What are they doing?" till the end, but once you look up the sky, the answer will be there.