Six year old Vanya Solntsev lives in a crowded rough orphanage in remote Russia. An Italian couple arrives looking to adopt him. He gains the nickname "The Italian". Despite pressure to go to Italy, he becomes obsessed with finding his birth mother. With the help of the older kids, they steal his file and he runs away to track her down.
It's a brutal and yet slightly touching world of an unusual family. It takes a little while to center the movie around the little boy. Honestly, the movie needs to point the camera at the kid and follow him for the first twenty minutes. There are so many little kids that it takes too long to pick him out of the pack. Other than that, this is a good Dickensian tale. It has violence but the kids live in this world as if it's normal.
It's a brutal and yet slightly touching world of an unusual family. It takes a little while to center the movie around the little boy. Honestly, the movie needs to point the camera at the kid and follow him for the first twenty minutes. There are so many little kids that it takes too long to pick him out of the pack. Other than that, this is a good Dickensian tale. It has violence but the kids live in this world as if it's normal.