AllMovie

The south Tyrol is just across from the Austrian border in northern Italy and was home to Werner Masten, the director and co-writer of this intriguing, emotive, semi-autobiographical film. When World War II starts, little Andreas (Mario Baumgartner -- representing the director) lives in a German-speaking peasant region of the Italian Tyrol. When the war ends, Andreas and his family go to live in Graz, in southeast Austria but under British occupation. There Andreas feels so uncomfortable with his Tyrolean culture that his family sends him off to a Catholic school of Swiss-German affiliation. Now Andreas has a new form of German to learn for his schooling, and when he has to cross the Italian border with his Italian passport to go home, he still cannot speak a word of that language. Although he is happy in his Swiss school, he leaves it for good when they take a banned book away from him. By then, he is 15 and finds a job in a slaughterhouse where he begins to learn more about life and the meaning of a homeland.