Ten years after his Oscar win for best feature film with 12 Years a Slave, director Steve McQueen has once again taken on an odyssey. This time it is not a man’s escape from slavery, but a child’s journey and fight for survival through the “Blitzkrieg” in London during the Second World War. And because a war film is probably the most powerful in the cinema, visit it flash shortly before its streaming start also selected German screens.
What is Blitz about and what makes the new war film so extraordinary?
The first trailer for Blitz promised a war film with an unusual perspective: Rita (Saoirse Ronan), like many British women, works in an arms factory in London in 1940. The Air raids by German planesin which bombs repeatedly rain down on the English capital, reach their climax during this time. With a heavy heart, single mother Rita decides to separate from her son George (Elliott Heffernan) and takes up the government’s offer To send the child to the countryside to safety.
But 9-year-old George doesn’t even think about letting himself be deported like that. He jumps out of the train and sets off alone on the way back to his mother and grandfather (Paul Weller). What follows is the boy’s difficult journey through war-torn London. On destroyed streets and in improvised shelters, he meets other young runaways, helpful night watchmen and ruthless thieves who guide his way home along ever new paths.
While most “classic” war films about the Second World War focus on the fighting on the European mainland alongside the soldiers, Blitz chooses a different path and shows it War of those left at home. Because the armaments workers, radio operators and children are experiencing a different war than that of the paratroopers and beach conquerors.
Blitz sometimes chooses this as an unusual war journey Children’s perspective without being a children’s filmto look at the horrors of a homeland that is no longer safe. Interwoven into the plot, the audience can learn something new here: about bans on lights at night; about the desperate discussions about finally opening closed subway stations as shelters for the population; and also about racism during wartime, since the young protagonist is the child of parents of different skin colors.
When does Blitz start in the cinema and when does it stream?
Blitz has a limited theatrical release. This means the war film will be released starting today November 7, 2024 only shown in the cinema program of a few cinemas. It’s best to google what these are where you live. In Berlin, for example, the drama is shown in the Tilsiter Lichtspiele and in the Xenon Cinema.
If you don’t have a cinema near you that shows Blitz, you don’t have to wait long for the streaming release: from Friday, December November 22, 2024the war film is coming to Apple TV+: in two weeks.