Children of the Open Road (movie)
Kinder der Landstrasse- User score: 5
- Production country: Germany, Austria, Switzerland
- Producer: Urs Egger
- Production companies: Panorama Films (CH), Lichtblick Film, Wega Film
- Genre: History, Drama
- Release date: 1/1/1992
- Run time: 117 min.
Movie description
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.
