War movies are rarely more harrowing and unsettling than when they focus on hapless, innocent children, and so it proves with WUNDERKINDER.

Director/co-writer Marcus Rosenmüller views a seldom-aired chapter of World War 2 through the eyes of three musical prodigies, or ”wunderkinder,” who live in the village of Poltava in central Ukraine. The twist here is that Germans are among the persecuted. The film is dedicated to the 1.5 million Jewish children who died in the Holocaust but there’s very little violence and bloodshed.

Despite their ethnic and religious differences, Jewish kids Larissa Brodsky (Imogen Burrell) and Abrascha Kaplan (Elin Kolev) form a pact -- “siblings for life”-- with Hanna Reich (Mathilda Adamik), the daughter of a wealthy German brewer. Abrascha is a preternaturally gifted violist, Larissa plays the piano and Hanna plays the violin, and all share the same teacher, Irina (Gudrun Landgrebe), who’s Jewish. Hanna’s mother Helga (Catherine H. Flemming) disapproves of her fraternising with the Jewish pair but her dad Max (Kai Wiesinger) is more enlightened.

To glorify Stalin, the Ukrainian kids are sent on a concert tour to Moscow and Leningrad and are promised an engagement at New York’s Carnegie Hall.
The filmmakers auditioned 400 kids, Kolev is the most impressive as well as being a true prodigy: he played every note in the film. Burrell and Adamik falter occasionally but generally succeed in conveying their characters’ fear, courage and loyalty. Konstantin Wecker is evil personified as SS Colonel Schartow, a smiling psychopath who forces the two Jewish kids to literally play for their lives. His enthusiasm for new mobile gas vans is truly chilling.

It’s a moving, absorbing drama .. composer Martin Stock’s score will delight classical music fans, not the least the virtuoso Kolev. [EDITED]


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