I am not one of those people who cry at the drop of a hat when watching a film. The high melodrama of most Hindi films, for instance, leaves me mostly cold. Lovers separated rarely elicit a tear, and people dying might make me feel vaguely sorry, but not much more.

What does make me feel really sad is when I see children in distress. Children lost, children helpless and in pain, children scared and hungry and lonely. (And yes, very importantly: child actors who do a good job of acting out these characters)… that is what can bring a lump to my throat.

And that is what The Search did to me.

Set in Berlin, just after the end of World War II, The Search begins with a large group of children, rescued from concentration camps and other places, being brought to an Allied shelter. Thin, ragged, their eyes huge and frightened, these children are, to all purposes, orphaned. Perhaps some of them do have a parent, long-separated from the child by the Nazis, but it will take time to find that parent. And in most cases, there is no hope at all: the child is all alone in the world.