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Children of the Open Road (1992)

Children of the Open Road (1992)

Drama History
Release Date: 1992, January 1
Directors: Urs Egger
Countries: Austria, Switzerland, Germany
Production: Panorama Films (CH), Lichtblick Film, Wega Film
Cast: Andrea Eckert, Mathias Gnädinger, Nina Petri, Jasmin Tabatabai, Hans Peter Korff, Johanna Karl-Lory, Herbert Leiser, Wolf-Dietrich Berg, Noemi Steuer

Overview:

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.