Children of the Open Road
01/01/1992
In 1939, after barely escaping the Nazis, a Gypsy family returns to Switzerland only to be torn apart by racial persecution in the benign guise of children's welfare. This fictionalized story of Jana, an eight-year-old Gypsy girl snatched from her parents and consigned to a life of orphanages and bleak foster homes, is based on a little-known chapter of Swiss history: From 1926 to 1972, the state-supported Pro Juventute, a children's aid foundation, forcibly removed some 700 Gypsy children from their families, in order to sever the ties with their culture and assimilate them to a "better way of life." The underlying aim was to preempt a new generation's caravans from following their nomadic traditions along Switzerland's country lanes.
Movie Information
Jasmin Tabatabai
as Jana Kessel
Andrea Eckert
as Theresa Kessel
Hans Peter Korff
as Dr. Schoenefeld
Nina Petri
as Fräulein Roth
Wolf-Dietrich Berg
as Heinrich Hottinger
Herbert Leiser
as Paul Kessel
Mathias Gnädinger
as Roger Kessel
Noemi Steuer
as Andrina Kessel
Johanna Karl-Lory
as Wahrsagerin
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