Jason Sondhi
A young German boy is hurt when he finds out that his best friend will be leaving soon “to go on a trip”. His mother, in order to hide the truth tells him that his friend and parents are going to “Toyland”.Shorts International has, for the last several years, gobbled up the rights to all Oscar-nominated short filmspackaging them in their successful DVD collections and placing them for individual sale in Apple’s iTunes store. So, while they’ve been available, it’s a rare treat that a film like 2009 winner Toyland (Spielzeugland) is available on YouTube even for a limited periodjust in time for this year’s Academy Awards! This 14min German film treads well-worn territory at this pointadults trying to protect innocent youngsters from a true understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust. However when done well these stories still possess an unmatched power to move an audience. And no bones about it, Toyland certainly is very well done. It has everything you want from a prestige short film production: wonderful acting, authentic set/costume design, and professional level cinematography complete with several interesting shots. But more impressively even than that is how director Jochen Alexander Freydank faciley tells his story in two timelines; background details emerge simultaneously with present action. It can be confusing at first, but it results in a big payoff at the end. A truly wonderful film.
