The Children's TrainMovies like The Children's Train
- Key Features:
- Post-war, Poverty, Family separation, Sacrifice, Hope, Italy, World War II aftermath, Difficult choices, Resilience, New beginnings
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Drama enthusiasts, Historical drama fans, International cinema viewers, Emotional storytelling
- Emotional Arc:
- Desperation → Hope
The Children's Train

In late 1940s Italy, a mother makes the difficult decision to send her son to the north, where he catches glimpses of a new life away from poverty.
The Children's Train
In the immediate post-war period, amidst the rubble of a poverty-ridden Naples, two kids, Carmine and Celestina, try to survive as best they can by helping each other out. One night, they secretly board a ship bound for New York to reach Celestina’s sister, who emigrated to America several years earlier. The two children join the many Italian emigrants seeking a new life in America and arrive in an unknown metropolis, which, after several misadventures, they will learn to call home.

Follow a group of children who are evacuated to a Yorkshire village during the Second World War, where they encounter a young soldier who, like them, is far away from home.

At the dawn of the 20th century, following their father's arrest on suspicion of betraying state secrets, the three Waterbury children—Bobbie, Phyllis and Peter—move with their mother to Yorkshire, where they find themselves involved in unexpected dramas along the railway by their new home.

On a northern Italian farm, Batistì and his wife decide to send their son Minec to school, sacrificing his help in the fields but hoping to break the cycle of poverty in the family. But when Minec’s shoe breaks while walking for miles, Batisti puts the family’s future at risk to replace the clog.

After the liberation of Auschwitz, an Italian prisoner of War begins a torturous voyage home to Turin, through a Europe caught between war and peace.

Antonio, a policeman (carabiniere), has an order to take two children (Rosetta and her brother Luciano) from Milan to Sicily to an orphanage. Their mother has been arrested for forcing Rosetta (11 years old) to work as a prostitute. First the relation between Antonio and the children is tough, but it relaxes so they become temporary friends.

In World War II London, nine-year-old George is evacuated to the countryside by his mother, Rita, to escape the bombings. Defiant and determined to return to his family, George embarks on an epic, perilous journey back home as Rita searches for him.

Rome, summer 1943. Four children play war while the bombs of real war explode around them. Italo is the rich son of the Federal, Cosimo has his father in confinement and an atavistic hunger, Vanda is an orphan and a believer, Riccardo comes from a wealthy Jewish family. They are different but they don't know it and between them "the greatest friendship in the world" is born, impervious to the divisions of history that bloodies Europe. But on October 16 the Jewish boy is taken away by the Germans together with over a thousand people from the Ghetto. Thanks to Italo's father Federale, the three friends believe they know where he is and, to honor the "spit pact", decide to leave in secret to convince the Germans to free their friend. Yet another imaginative mission becomes reality, the three children travel alone in an Italy exhausted by war, among disbanded soldiers, deserters, occupying German troops, exhausted and hungry populations.

In 1941, the inhabitants of a small Jewish village in Central Europe organize a fake deportation train so that they can escape the Nazis and flee to Palestine.

Train operator Andrea Marcocci has to witness the suicide of a desperate man who jumps in front of his train. Under the influence of this shock he starts making mistakes. A check up by a doctor reveals that he's at the brink of becoming an alcoholic. Due to this evaluation he is degraded and must accept a salary cut.

After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.

From childhood to fatherhood, Piero learns things the hard way while growing up in a working-class neighborhood of Livorno.

Turin, 1969. Nine-year-old Massimo’s idyllic childhood is shattered by the mysterious death of his mother. The young boy refuses to accept this brutal loss, even if the priest says she is now in Heaven. Years later in the 90s, adult Massimo has become an accomplished journalist. After reporting on the war in Sarajevo, he begins to suffer from panic attacks. As he prepares to sell his parents’ apartment, Massimo is forced to relive his traumatic past. Compassionate doctor Elisa could help tormented Massimo open up and confront his childhood wounds…

A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is racked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city’s poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity.

Enrico is a struggling journalist in the Rome of 1945. He receives a phone call informing him that his younger brother Lorenzo has died. Enrico recalls their long and difficult relationship; he was brought up by their poor but warm-hearted grandmother, Lorenzo was raised as a gentleman by a wealthy local aristocrat. Reunited in the Florence of the 1930s, Enrico becomes his spoilt brother's keeper, forever haunted by a sense of guilty responsibility towards a man he both hates and loves.

An emotional journey of a former school teacher, who writes letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, as they search for the father he never knew.

Giulio suddenly finds himself having to change his life when his wife, after discovering his betrayal, asks for a separation and, suddenly, the reality around him is no longer the same. Forty years old and father of two children, Giulio is forced by circumstances to say goodbye to family and economic well-being and to study new solutions in order to stay afloat and not drown in a new poverty made of double rents and double bills to pay, solitary lunches in fourth-rate restaurants, children's wishes not to be ignored and creditors to hide from.

In seaside Italy, a Holocaust survivor with a daycare business takes in a 12-year-old street kid who recently robbed her.

Sandra returns to her childhood village to take care of family business, but childhood memories and secrets soon overcome her.

Alma, Jean and Sebastiano, the children of divorced parents, arrive in Rome from Paris on a visit to their father. During a holiday, the family’s tensions come to the surface.

Once upon a time, a poor woodcutter and his wife lived in a great forest. Cold, hunger, poverty, and a war raging all around them meant their lives were very hard. One day, the woodcutter's wife rescues a baby. A baby girl thrown from one of the many trains that constantly pass through the forest. This baby, this "most precious of cargoes", will transform the lives of the poor woodcutter's wife and her husband, as well as those whose paths the child will cross—including the man who threw her from the train. And some will try to protect her, whatever the cost. Their story will reveal the worst and the best in the hearts of men.

Two Jewish boys escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another. Ultimately, they are hunted down by a group of old, armed home-guardists.

With his family mired in financial troubles, Domenico moves to Milan, Italy, from his small town to get a job in lieu of furthering his education. A lack of options forces him to take a position as a messenger at a big company, where he hopes to receive a promotion soon. There, Domenico meets Antonietta, a young woman in a similar situation as himself. The two form a tentative relationship, but the soulless nature of their jobs threatens to keep them apart.

Film director Blasetti is looking for a little girl for his new movie. Along with other mothers, Maddelena takes her daughter to Cinecittà, hoping she’ll be selected and become a star. She is ready to sacrifice anything for little Maria.

Missing the train is very bad. Seeing it leave with your children and those of your friends you had to accompany on vacation is a whole other story ... that of the crazy pursuit from Turin to Sicily of a father and grandfather as different as they are unreliable.

In postwar Rome, a working-class woman dreams of a better future for herself and her daughter while facing abuse at the hands of her domineering husband. When a mysterious letter arrives, she discovers the courage to change the circumstances of her life.

Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. But when greedy developers threaten the community’s land, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.

A Japanese photojournalist revisits Vietnam after the liberation to document the nation, and begins following and documenting the young children from a poor Vietnamese family.

Twenty years after tragedy cut their graduation trip short, four friends return to that destination to finish what they started in 1980. However, as they find out, you can't repeat the past.

When Debora's ex-husband, a popular neomelodic singer, loses his life in a stage dive, she worries that her 11-year-old son Ciro may be showing symptoms of depression. Taken to a child psychologist, shy Tommaso, Ciro eventually confesses to him that it's not his father's death that has got him down, it's love for his classmate, the cute Ludovica. The two make a deal: Tommaso will help Ciro to win the affections of Ludovica, while Ciro will give Tommaso a hand at having a chance with his mother.

Two people, a Frenchman and a Jewish German woman, meet on a train while escaping the German army entering France.

Set in the small, mountainous village of Vermiglio during the waning days of WWII, a series of dramatic, consequential events unfold after the arrival of a taciturn Sicilian soldier, who hides out in town after deserting the army. While there, the soldier develops a romance with a provincial family’s eldest daughter.

Suddenly and inexplicably Marco and Giulia wake up with three children aged 10, 9 and 6 who call them mum and dad. Getting rid of it and returning to the happy "previous" life will become their only goal.

Impoverished priest Harihar Ray leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work. His wife, Sarbojaya, looks after their rebellious daughter, Durga, and young son, Apu. The children enjoy the small pleasures of their difficult life.

A young refugee of the Sudanese Civil War who wins a lottery for relocation to the United States with three other lost boys. Encountering the modern world for the first time, they develop an unlikely friendship with a brash American woman assigned to help them, but the young man struggles to adjust to this new life and his feelings of guilt about the brother he left behind.

A Jewish boy living in Amsterdam at the onset of World War II is taken to a concentration camp with his parents. Based on the memoir of Holocaust survivor Jona Oberski.

Anna and her son Valerio run away from a husband and a father who has destroyed the love of their family with beatings and anger. They seek refuge in Turin, with Carla, a lifelong friend, an actress and a woman who lives against the grain, who welcomes them, and with the example of her own experience, will show them the way to a just and possible rebirth.

When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.

Christine’s life has not been easy lately. Her lonely routine is divided between free food banks distributions and wandering the streets. On a cold winter night she founds Suli, an 8-year-old Eritrean boy, sobbing in front of her shelter. Christine understands that he is lost and has been separated from his mother. Bounded by their marginal condition, they embark together on an emotional journey to find Suli’s mother in the underground world of Paris...

After losing his parents, a young Jewish boy wanders Eastern Europe, seeking refuge during World War II.

The epic tale of a class struggle in twentieth century Italy, as seen through the eyes of two childhood friends on opposing sides.

The story of a young mother with a failed marriage behind her, who fights daily for her dream to open a hair salon, challenging her fate in an effort to free herself and gain independence and right to happiness.

A young woman in early-1900s Italy searches for a mystical sanctuary where her stillborn child can be brought back to life long enough to be baptized.

While subjected to the horrors of WWII Germany, young Liesel finds solace by stealing books and sharing them with others. Under the stairs in her home, a Jewish refugee is being sheltered by her adoptive parents.

A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.

Silvio refuses to fight for the fascists and joins the resistance with Elena. After the war, his vitriolic newspaper articles cause him to be sentenced to imprisonment.

Set in Genoa, the film concerns the financial struggles and emotional strain that occur after Michele loses his job. He and his wife Elsa are forced to give up their affluent lifestyle and cope with the tensions of moving into a smaller home, finding new work, and making sacrifices.

After a fateful encounter in the summer of 1966, the lifepaths of two brothers from a middle-class Roman family diverge, intersecting with some of the most significant events of postwar Italian history in the following decades.

Set during the Bosnian war in the early 1990s, Luka is a mild-mannered railway clerk whose life is turned upside down, not just by the outbreak of the war, but when his wife runs off with a local musician. Then Luka's son is conscripted and eventually captured in the fighting. To recover his son, Luka is commanded to guard a pretty young Muslim nurse who will be used in a hostage swapping operation.

Georgina is a teacher determined to make a difference in the lives of the children she educates in the classroom of a wagon school in rural Mexico.

A young father and his two children struggle to find harmony after his wife leaves them for another man.

In the near future, the southern Italian city of Taranto is surrounded by barbed wire that no one, not even the police, dares to cross. The poorest are left fighting for survival, while gangs compete for the territory. Two thirteen-year-old orphans who grew up together, dream of joining one of the gangs.

The life of a working-class boy in Rome through the '70s and '80s, choosing his own path with his friends and family.

The story of Edgardo Mortara, a young Jewish boy living in Bologna, Italy, who in 1858, after being secretly baptized, was forcibly taken from his family to be raised as a Christian. His parents’ struggle to free their son became part of a larger political battle that pitted the papacy against forces of democracy and Italian unification.

In a small suburb on the outskirts of Rome, the cheerful heat of summer camouflages a stifling atmosphere of alienation. From a distance, the families seem normal, but it’s an illusion: in the houses, courtyards and gardens, silence shrouds the subtle sadism of the fathers, the passivity of the mothers and the guilty indifference of adults. But it’s the desperation and repressed rage of the children that will explode and cut through this grotesque façade, with devastating consequences for the entire community.

In a high school in the outskirts of Rome, it's the last day before the summer holidays. A literature teacher reminisces the past year and wonders what will become of the students he cared for as if they were his children.

The story of the pioneering project to rehabilitate child survivors of the Holocaust on the shores of Lake Windermere.

The time is 1945-46. 10 year old Eda and his friend Tonda live in a small village outside Prague. In school, their class is so wild and indisciplined that their teacher quits and is replaced by the militant Igor Hnidzo. He is very strict – but also very fair. His weakness though, is his interest in young women.

Marco is married to a gorgeous woman, has a child and a great job. Everything seems perfect, at least until his wife of 25 years announces that she has another man and wants a separation. Marco is forced to leave home.

Irene lives in Rome. When her mother ask to, she go back to Rimini, her hometown, to take care of her autistic brother, Omar. She soon discover that Omar knows very well what to expect from the future, but in order to achieve his dreams, he need to be independent, which is why Irene begins a tender crash course to teach him adult life.

Two young women, Margaret and Lisa, are set to take the overnight train from Munich in Germany to stay with Lisa's parents in Italy for Christmas. Unfortunately a pair of psychotic hoodlums and an equally demented nymphomaniac woman terrorize the pair.

Julie finally gets an interview for a job where she can raise her children better only to run into a national transit strike.

Giorgio and Tito, father and son. A successful journalist and a lazy teenager apparently impossible to understand. Giorgio's dream is to take Tito to the Nasca Hill in Liguria, but Tito prefers to spend his entire day with his group of friends, eating, talking about nothing and playing video games. Until one day when he suddenly informs his father that he would join him in this trip. After a series of accidents and misunderstandings, at the end, somehow father and son will find the way to communicate … or at least they will try.

Riko is an honest and hardworking man who can count on a group of real friends and a loving wife. Things change after he loses his job and experiences a midlife crisis.

Claudia and Flavio were once passionately in love, but all of that is over. Now, in their fifties, they must venture anew into the world of love and dating once more but for Claudia confronting the end and accepting a new beginning isn’t so easy. Claudia is unwilling to let go and forget the life she’s built with Flavio, while Flavio, eager to move on, soon finds himself in a relationship with a much younger woman. Claudia soon reconnects with Nina, a student from her days as a professor.

When Italy surrenders to the Allies, part of the Italian army is dispersed and soldiers begin to return to their homes.

Longing for a brighter future, two Senegalese teenagers embark on a journey from West Africa to Italy. However, between their dreams and reality lies a labyrinth of checkpoints, the Sahara Desert, and the vast waters of the Mediterranean.

Twelve-year-old Koichi, who has been separated from his brother Ryunosuke due to his parents' divorce, hears a rumor that the new bullet trains will precipitate a wish-granting miracle when they pass each other at top speed.

Italy, 1916. Oreste Jacovacci and Giovanni Busacca are called, as all the Italian youths, to serve the army in the WWI. They both try in every way to avoid serving the army.

When a impoverished widow’s family moves to the big city, two of her five sons become romantic rivals with deadly results.

Three Italian retirees embark on a journey to find a new country to live in.

The story of four inmates during their 48 hours furlough, of their reality and how it has brought them behind bars. The characters are described with realism, with their contradictions, their desperation, the temptation of an escape, but the cornerstone of the movie is the sincerity of the positive feelings of each and everyone of them: the love of a father for his son, the love for a woman, for friends, and most of all the pursuit of a lost (if ever had) personal dignity and pride. Four characters of different ages and extractions, three man and a woman: Luigi, Donato, Rossana and Angelo.

In the aftermath of the most devastating conflict mankind had ever experienced, the tiny island of Shikotan became part of the Sakhalin Oblast... and on the unhealed border in this remote corner of the world, friendship among children from two different countries timidly blossomed, striving to overcome language barriers and the waves of history. Inspired by true events.

Orphaned after a Nazi air raid, Paulette, a young Parisian girl, runs into Michel, an older peasant boy, and the two quickly become close. Together, they try to make sense of the chaotic and crumbling world around them, attempting to cope with death as they create a burial ground for Paulette's deceased pet dog. Eventually, however, Paulette's stay with Michel's family is threatened by the harsh realities of wartime.

The film is set in Marais, a quiet region along the banks of Loire river in 1918. Riton is afflicted with a bad-tempered wife and three unruly children. Garris lives alone with his recollections of World War I trenches. Their daily life consists of seasonal work and visits from their two pals: Tane, the local train conductor and Amédée, a dreamer and voracious reader of classics.

Determined to survive at any price, Edith, a young Jewish woman deported to an extermination camp, manages to survive by accepting the role of kapo, a privileged prisoner whose mission is to ruthlessly guard other prisoners.

Somewhere in the bleak Italian Alps is an isolated boarding school for troubled boys of the ultra privileged. 17-year old Giulio is sent there by his mother and finds himself instantly at odds with both his peers and the staff until the arrival of the eccentric Eduordo. The pair bond over their mutual desire for escape, which they eventually do, and run away to a nightclub in the middle of the woods. There they meet Elena, a young prostitute whose destiny will be unforgettably linked to theirs. For the boys, the night is full of freedom, disturbing experiences, and secrets. But what they discover about their experiences, and their school, may be the biggest secret of all.

The story of a widower and his two sons, focusing on their complex and sometimes difficult relationships.

Luigi has lived with his mother and little brother since their abusive father Franco left when he was 10. Now a young man brimming with rage, he joins a far-right gang in search of belonging, but Franco's return poisons everything.

When young Tommi goes missing during a festival in the Dolomites in 2010, his parents are devastated. Five years later, a boy is found with no name or records; DNA tests prove it is Tommi. But while Tommi's father Manuel welcomes him back with open arms, his mother Linda is not convinced that it is her son. Suspicion and superstition permeate the pores of this eerie mystery thriller.

A father reminisces about his childhood when he and his younger brother moved to a new town with their mother, her new husband and their dog, Shane. When the younger brother is subjected to physical abuse at the hands of their brutal stepfather, Mike decides to convert their toy trolley, the "Radio Flyer", into a plane to fly him to safety.

Antonio married Amalia and went to fight in Russia during World War II. Since he didn't return Amalia thought he was dead, so she married another man. Many year after the war end, Antonio returned. Amalia has to choose between two husbands.

When her social-climbing father is relocated from small-town North to his native Rome, 12-year-old Caterina enrolls to his old school, finding herself at sea with an environment where students sort themselves by social class and their parents' political affiliation.

Three children evacuated from London during World War II are forced to stay with an eccentric spinster. The children's initial fears disappear when they find out she is in fact a trainee witch.

After World War II, Anita, a young survivor of Auschwitz, becomes involved in an intense and passionate affair that almost shatters her until she gains the strength to start a new life.

A nearly sightless boy is sent to a school for blind children, where he secretly discovers the possibilities of the recorded sound.

As the Allied forces approach Paris in August 1944, German Colonel Von Waldheim is desperate to take all of France's greatest paintings to Germany. He manages to secure a train to transport the valuable art works even as the chaos of retreat descends upon them. The French resistance however wants to stop them from stealing their national treasures but have received orders from London that they are not to be destroyed. The station master, Labiche, is tasked with scheduling the train and making it all happen smoothly but he is also part of a dwindling group of resistance fighters tasked with preventing the theft. He and others stage an elaborate ruse to keep the train from ever leaving French territory.

Claudio is a construction worker living in the outskirts of Rome. He's happily married and his wife is pregnant with their third child. However, a dramatic event comes to upset this simple and happy life.

An eight-year-old boy is willing to do whatever it takes to end World War II so he can bring his father home. The story reveals the indescribable love a father has for his little boy and the love a son has for his father.

The young priest Father Giulio returns to Rome, his hometown, after a long pilgrimage. Don Giulio hopes to live peacefully with his family and his friends, but discovers that many of them are depressed or frustrated, and some suicidal.

September, 1945. Sebastian impatiently waits for the return of his friend Angelina, whom he has not seen for two years. When the plane carrying the young woman to her small village in the Alps is reported to have crashed in the mountains, Sebastian is convinced that Angelina is still alive. Along with his faithful dog Belle, Sebastian embarks on the most dangerous adventure of his life.

Freed after a lengthy term in a juvenile detention center, convicted child killer Jack Burridge finds work as a deliveryman and begins dating co-worker Michelle. While out on the road one day, Jack notices a distressed child, and, after reuniting the girl with her family, becomes a local celebrity. But when a local newspaper unearths his past, Jack must cope with the anger of citizens who fear for the safety of their children.

Set against the sun-soaked shores of Italy in the summertime, seven different tales unfold about life, love, loss, family, and friendship.

Prevented from using mobile phones due to the non-existent reception of the location, a school trip to a rural town becomes a life-changing experience of friendship and love for a group of Italian kids and their teacher.

Salvatore and Romolo are two young and poor young men that are neighbours and friends. They live with their parents in Piazza Navona, Rome. They are poor but handsome, and both fall in love with Giovanna.

Italy from the '80s to the present day, through the dreams, loves, successes and failures of four friends.

Civilisation is coming to an end. The death of his only relative gives a feral boy the pretext to journey beyond the confines of his home environment; only by doing this will he be able to decipher his father's journal, the most valuable artefact in his legacy. This singular contribution to the post-apocalyptic sci-fi genre tells of a humanity in crisis, while at the same time conveying the adventurous spirit of adolescence.

A victim from World War II's "Death Railway" sets out to find those responsible for his torture. A true story.
