A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Toyland discusses a theme that has been discussed several times on different films: the Second World War. However, what makes this short film special is the sensibility of this portrait. Instead of showing the explicit violence of the war, it touches the audience by showing two kids - a German and a Jewish, who are best friends and are going to be separated because the Jewish boy's family is going to be sent to a concentration camp. In order to avoid shocking the young German boy, her mother says that his friend is going with his family to Toyland. The depiction of the effect of war through the eyes of kids is not something new: in a completely different tone, Janos Szasz has done the same in his adaptation of The Notebook, a novel written by Ágota Kristof; and The boy in the Striped Pyjamas has a similar story. However, even if the theme is not new, Toyland is still a surprisingly intense short film. It mixes scenes of the mother looking for her son after the Germans had taken the Jewish to the concentration camps and flashbacks of what happened before this - how close the two kids were and how the German boy decided to follow his friend to Toyland. And the plot twist at the end makes the story even more dramatic. Second World War is a sensitive topic, and it is amazing when we find a director that was able to portray it in such a touching way.

This is what the little German boy shouts when he is given back to his mother and taken away from his best friend who is about to go on a journey to Toyland. Obviously he is going somewhere else, a much darker place and even if little Heinrich does not exactly understand what is going on, he still realizes that it has to be something sinister. This 14-minute short was written and directed by Jochen Alexander Freydank and won an Academy Award and many many other prizes at film festivals all around the globe. It is a bit sad to see that, to this date, Freydank (and his co-writer) have not managed to build on that Oscar win at all in terms of full feature films, although he has been more prolific in recent years than right after the big victory. So maybe there is hope. Julia Jäger, on the other hand, the lead actress has been very prolific before and after this film.I personally thought this was a good short movie. The actor who played the Jew father did a very fine job without even talking and the rest of the cast were all solid too. The best (most ironic) moment is when the Nazi officer apologizes to the mother for the unlucky circumstances right in the face of hundreds of Jews who are about to go on their last journey. What I did not like that much was that it is not narrated in chronological order. I guess otherwise my rating may have been even better. And the mother is not the smartest either if she believes she can keep the son from joining his best friend by telling there are huge teddy bears in Toyland. Obviously, the whole Toyland idea was a massive lie to confront her son not with the evil that was going on (if she was understanding it herself), but the consequence of this lie was finally that little Heinrich was confronted with it as much as it could have happened. Good movie. Recommended.

This short won the Academy Award for Live Action Short. There will be mild spoilers ahead: The basic premise of this short is that a Jewish family is about to be deported to a camp and when another boy whose best friend is among those going away asks his mother just where they're going, she tells him what she thinks is a comforting lie-that his friend David is going to "Toyland".Naturally, the other little boy, Heinrich, wants to go with his friend, only to be told by everyone that he can't go, with no real explanation, just that he can't go. He decides he's going, regardless of what anyone says and so he packs a bag and follows them to the train.His mother finds out he's missing and races off to find him before it's too late. She encounters unfeeling, uncaring neighbors and suspicious SS men, one of whom thinks shes Jewish herself. Ultimately, they believe that she's serious and they go to check the train.The ending of the short is quite good and should be seen. This short is on DVD/Blu-Ray as part of a compilation of Academy Award winning animated and live action shots released by Shorts International. The short itself is very good and the compilation is excellent. Most recommended.

Usually, I don't watch short films but after seeing and reviewing about five feature films in three days, I needed to see a movie that could capture a gamut of emotions in few minutes and that is precisely what 'Toyland' does. It takes one of the most crucial periods in history - the holocaust and brings it down to the lives of two families and an incident that changes the course of their lives in the dark period.A mother finds her son Heinrich missing one day, after she tells him the previous day that their neighbors are moving to Toyland. The prospect of going to a place filled with toys titillates Heinrich and he gets too eager to go with the neighbors, which includes his best friend Paul. The first seven minutes oscillate between flashbacks of Heinrich's excitement and the mother's frantic search. This leads to an end that is so poignant, gripping, chilling and fascinating that it brought tears to my eyes. The fourteen minute film so effortlessly manages to touch the audiences that it truly deserves all the accolades that it has got. 8 out of 10.