Øen i Fuglegaden

With The Island on Bird Street, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen joins the ranks of international film directors such as his Danish colleague Bille August. Kragh-Jacobsen can be pleased with the result.

The film is set in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw in 1943, where the boy Alex lives with his father and his uncle. At intervals men, women and children are taken away to who knows what. One day the last of them are also taken away in a large-scale operation, but Alex's family stage a diversion so that Alex can escape. Alex must now try to fend for himself in the deserted ghetto until his father comes back and rescues him. Many dangers lurk. For one thing, the Gestapo occasionally return to sniff out the few Jews who have managed to hide. For another, there is a struggle among the survivors for what little food and drink there is. Alex can only rely on himself and his pet mouse Snow, so he sees himself as a latter-day Robinson Crusoe, a book he loves to read.

The film's strengths are its poetic and atmospheric images and the creeping menace that makes itself felt in the ruins of the ghetto. The film also deserves praise for leaving the ending open. It is more problematic that so much of the action is concentrated on Alex's lonely wanderings. The drama dies in the stretches where he is the only character of any importance. The lead, newcomer Jordan Kiziuk, is not to blame, though. He fits the part perfectly.