Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

TxMike Saw this on Netflix streaming. The critic Ebert has a good review of it.The story begins in 1942, as Nazis are rounding up Jews in Poland, and the little boy Jacob Beer is told to hide in a small place behind a seam in the wallpaper. He sees what happens, some of his family are killed, others including his 15-yr-old sister are taken away. Instead of staying put as he was told, he runs into the forest, until he can go no more and covers himself in leaves in a depression in the ground.A Greek geologist Rade Serbedzija as Athos is in a team dig and finds Jacob, takes him to safety, brings him to Greece, raises him as if he were his own son. Eventually they move to Canada where Jacob grows up, eventually turning to writing and teaching.This is a story of the human condition, in this case how the events of that day in 1942 shaped the life of Jacob. He could not forget, he could not help wondering what would have happened if he had stayed in the house as he was told. Was his sister Bella alive? If so would he ever find her? All this shaped how he saw the world, and how he reacted to others and potential relationships.The source book was written by a poet, so it is fitting that much of Jacob's writing depicted in the movie has a highly poetic sound. It is a very good movie, it moves rather deliberately but is always interesting.Stephen Dillane is the adult Jakob, I knew I had seen him before but could not place him, until IMDb reminded me he was Harry Vardon in "The Greatest Game", the story of how amateur Francis Ouimet won the US Amateur Golf championship in 1913. He was perfect as Vardon, and is perfect here as Jacob.

Mike B A very moving and thoughtful film and it does so on a very personal level by examining the experience of a young boy. The film flips back and forth from his war experience to his after-war life in Canada. It deals well with the trauma brought on by war – in this case the Holocaust. This young boy lost his parents and sister to the Nazis. He is forever tormented of what became of his sister who he last saw being forcefully dragged away by the German tormentors. It does make one wonder at the brutality of a people who kill needlessly and never imagine the lifelong suffering that they cause. This is the strength of this movie. This evil is countered by the generosity of his Greek mentor who became his life-long adopted father.As mentioned the film shifts back and forth between the war years and his time in Canada. The periods when he was a young boy are the most engaging parts of the movie. There are times during the Canadian sequences where the film becomes somewhat mundane. The time spent with his first girl-friend is so superficial (the actress is simply eye-candy) that the movie almost loses course and becomes banal.Also some of the sequences when he returns to Greece are almost an advertisement for a beautiful vacation. The settings are so luxurious that they start to detract from the main message of the movie.Also at times the film becomes a little too 'wordy' – there are too many quotations from passages of a book.Nevertheless this is overall a powerful movie.

Howard Schumann This week Jews and others around the world celebrated Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed every year since 1959 to "never forget" the murder of six million Jews during World War II. Loosely based on a novel of the same name by Canadian author Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces by Jeremy Podeswa whose father was a Holocaust survivor, touches on an often-overlooked aspect of the tragedy, that those who have managed to survive deep trauma may be unable to rid themselves of their obsessions. The film spans a period of roughly 35 years, beginning in 1942 and concluding in the late 1970, going back and forth in time between the events of childhood and present time. Set in Biskupin, Poland during World War II, seven-year old Jakob Beer (Robbie Kay) witnesses the murder of his parents and the abduction of his beloved sister Bella by German soldiers.Disregarding Bella's instructions to remain at home, Jakob runs away. Hiding in the forest, he plants himself into the ground "like a turnip", hiding his face with leaves until he is discovered by Athos Roussos (Rade Serbedzija), a warm hearted Zorba-like Greek archaeologist on a dig. Athos brings the traumatized boy to his home on the sun-drenched island of Zakynthos in Greece where they live through the Nazi occupation, suffering deprivation but surviving the atrocities that befall Greece's Jewish community. The relationship between Jakob and Athos is slow to develop but they eventually form a bond. "I will be your koumbaros, your godfather," Athos says. "We must carry each other. If we don't have this, what are we?" After the war, Athos receives a teaching position in Canada and they move there hoping to forget the past. Jakob, now played as an adult by Stephen Dillane, has neighbors who are also Jewish immigrants and he develops a close relationship with Ben (Ed Stoppard) who he watches grow into a gifted writer. Though Jakob has become a successful writer in Canada himself, his marriage to the lovely Alex (Rosamund Pike) is threatened by haunting memories of Bella and his obsession with the Holocaust. Her vivacity and joy for life is in sharp contrast to his solemnity and he "longs for the loss of memory", and writes about his wife's "shameless vitality" saying, "To live with ghosts requires solitude".After their breakup, Jakob falls in love with Micheala (Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer), a scholar twenty-five years his junior, and her charm and intelligence allows him to venture out of his shell. Fugitive Pieces is a quiet and sensitive film that has a touching poetic quality and Robbie Kay turns in one of the best child performances I have seen in years. Though the film often becomes too literary and does not soar dramatically, its message is strong - that though we should never forget a tragedy, there may be a steep price for remembering.

srlevinson Moving, beautifully crafted, unbelievable performances, direct, poetic, raw. I was so moved by this film, I find it hard to compose complete sentences to describe it. This movie touched and inspired every cell in my body. The acting by the entire cast was precise and authentic. How were they able to compile this cast? How did they manage to extract these performances? The writing is intelligent, sensitive, moving and direct. This is a rare script. Each scene in this movie required such an investment by the entire film crew to reach its rare authenticity. The courage it would take to produce this film escapes me. While the result deserves the highest awards, this is not a film that was made for the sake of popularity. This film feels like a labor of love and the result of the truest of intentions. My hat is off to anyone who participated in this film.