The Children's Train

In Naples in 1946 a poor woman puts her seven-year-old son on a train. The trains are carrying children from the south to the north, where families will look after them for a few months. Amerigo goes to a woman's house near Modena. There is food there, and school, and a violin. When the time comes to go back, the boy is caught between two lives. The subject is not poverty but a child unable to choose between two mothers. The film locates the real break in the return: back in Naples, Amerigo can neither describe the life in the north nor resume the old one. The form moves between two times, childhood and old age. The adult Amerigo returns to Naples many years later and the story opens backwards from there. The source is real: in post-war Italy the children of poor southern families were sent temporarily to families in the north, and those trains carried tens of thousands. The programme went largely undiscussed for decades; the film rests on Viola Ardone's novel and brought the subject to a wide audience. Cristina Comencini directs, with Barbara Ronchi as the mother and Serena Rossi as the woman in the north. It was released on Netflix. Who it is for: viewers interested in Italian history and drama from a child's position. Who it is not for: anyone who will find it emotionally soft; the film noticeably lightens the harshness of its subject.