The Boy is Gone

Filmmaker Christoph Bohn grew up during the sixties in Kortrijk; a provincial town in the Flemish speaking part of Belgium. However, German was the language spoken at home rather than Flemish. Christoph’s father originated from Eupen, in the Belgian East Cantons. These ‘German’, or rather ‘German-Belgian’, roots made his youth anything but easy: regularly targeted by school bullies, he was routinely excluded from children’s parties for being the ‘kraut’s’ kid. Second World War scars were still raw, leaving his father mute about the heavy burden he shouldered for the remainder of his life...

One day, Christoph discovered something in his parents’ bedroom, something which turned his entire world upside down: an old photograph of his father as a fourteen year old in a German uniform, complete with a swastika arm band. It was never mentioned between them. His father never volunteered to speak of his past, and Christoph’s nerve failed him whenever he thought of the subject. His father died in 2001, taking to his grave in Eupen the answers to many of Christoph’s troubling questions.

Today Christoph Bohn returns to Eupen to investigate and disentangle his father’s true story and the history of the German speaking region. Using fascinating testimonies, previously unseen archive material and shockingly graphic animated sequences, the web of this little known piece of history is unravelled in a riveting manner.