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| The Year My Parents Went on Vacation |
A heart-warming story that blends drama and comedy into something deeply moving and utterly unique.
In 1970 Brazil, a military régime has ruled the country since 1964, but 12-year-old Mario's biggest concern is whether Brazil wins the World Cup. It is also the year that his parents are forced to flee in the middle of the night, leaving him at his grandfather's house in São Paulo, unaware that the elderly man has just died hours before.
Whisked to the funeral by Yiddish-speaking strangers, Mauro is reluctantly taken under the wing of his late grandfather's solitary and observant Jewish neighbour, Shlomo, who works at the nearby synagogue. Though nonplussed to find Mauro isn't circumcised on account of his Catholic mother, eventually the congregation and local neighbourhood amiably adopts the boy, while Shlomo courageously tries to find where the parents have vanished to.
First screened in the Official Competition at this year's Berlin Film Festival, this partly autobiographical film - both of director Cao Hamburger's parents were arrested for their political activities - is as graceful, lucid and moving a film as is likely to be seen this year.
