I Am David

The source is the 1963 novel by the Danish writer Anne Holm. David is a twelve-year-old who has grown up in a labour camp in Bulgaria. One day a guard opens the gate and gives him a compass, a loaf of bread, soap and a letter, and tells him to get to Denmark and deliver it. No reason is offered. The film follows the boy from Greece to Italy and on to Switzerland. But the subject is not the journey, it is trust: David has learned not to trust anyone, does not know how to smile, and assumes that everyone who helps him is setting a trap. The hardest scene is not an escape but someone being kind to him. Ben Tibber plays David, Jim Caviezel the man from the camp and Joan Plowright the painter he meets on the road. Paul Feig directed, doing something entirely unlike the comedies he would later be known for. Watchable as a family. It is not as hard as the novel, though; anyone who knows the book will notice how much softer and more explanatory the film is.