Czech Film Center

Synopsis

A film inspired by actual events involving Italian and German kids at the beginning of the 1990s. Ten-year-old Barbu lives in a poor and remote Ukrainian village. A former performer named Caruso arrives one day and buys the boy from his parents, promising him a successful career in the circus. He is an insistent personality and thus persuades the parents to sell their elder daughter Mimma as well. He then smuggles both of them to Berlin. Once there, however, he takes the girl to a brothel, and inducts Barbu into a life of crime. An unusual relationship grows between the man and boy. At first Barbu admires and blindly trusts Caruso. At the same time, the circus performer comes to see the dark-eyed boy as the son he never had.