A Bag of Marbles

Paris under occupation, 1941. Joseph and Maurice, the two small sons of a Jewish barber, have to leave their parents and make their way south to the unoccupied zone. Their father has taught them one thing: nowhere, to nobody, are they to say that they are Jewish. The journey takes months and the two boys are on their own. Jacques Doillon directed the film from the book in which Joseph Joffo told the story of his own childhood. The telling does not make heroes of the boys: they are afraid, they lie, they steal, and they survive. The film does not show the genocide directly; it keeps the danger one step away and draws its tension from there. The same book was filmed again years later.