Children of the Open Road

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.

Cast

Jasmin Tabatabai Jana Kessel Andrea Eckert Theresa Kessel Hans Peter Korff Dr. Schoenefeld Nina Petri Fräulein Roth Wolf-Dietrich Berg Heinrich Hottinger Herbert Leiser Paul Kessel Mathias Gnädinger Roger Kessel Noemi Steuer Andrina Kessel Johanna Karl-Lory Wahrsagerin

Metadata from the source database.