The boy in the striped pajamas

Berlin, 1940s. Eight-year-old Bruno returns home from playing with his school friends to discover feverish activity at home: his father, a Nazi officer, has been promoted and his mother is planning a party. Bruno does not understand what they are celebrating since his father's new destination is outside of Berlin. The whole family will have to move to the countryside, forcing him to leave the house and friends he loves so much. Their fear of loneliness is confirmed when the family arrives at their new, isolated and sinister home.

Bruno finds it difficult to get used to his new life and becomes increasingly bored. There are no children to play with and his mother forbids him to explore the area around the house. Her older sister, Gretel, doesn't bother to talk to her: she's too busy with her dolls or talking to one of her father's men, the handsome, aging Lieutenant Kotler. Bruno is intrigued by the existence of a kind of strange farm that he sees from his bedroom window, in which all its inhabitants seem to be wearing striped pajamas. When he tries to find out more about the 'farm' they tell him to forget about it and forbid him to go anywhere there. We know something that Bruno doesn't know, and that is that the farm is an extermination camp. His mother ignores him too. He believes he is living next to an internment or work camp. Her husband has sworn never to reveal its true purpose: a killing factory designed to carry out the 'Final Solution', the systematic extermination of the Jewish people.

Bruno befriends Pavel, who works in the kitchen. It is a sad kitchen boy who wears striped pajamas under his apron. While his mother is away from the house, Bruno falls from the garden swing and cuts his knee. And it is Pavel who heals his wound. Pavel tells Bruno that he dedicated himself to the practice of medicine and smiles when the boy tells him that he must not be very good if he needed to practice. After several weeks of wandering around the house, Bruno ends up defying his mother and sneaks out of the house through the backyard in search of adventure. He wanders through the woods and comes across a wire fence. On the other side, a small boy in striped pajamas is unloading debris from a wheelbarrow. Bruno is so happy to have found someone his age to play with, that he begins to visit Shmuel, his new friend, every day, without saying anything to his parents or his sister. In the following weeks, Bruno begins to become increasingly disturbed by what he sees and hears at home and by what he discovers in his secret life by the fence with Shmuel. As his tutor tells him that Jews are evil incarnate, his bond with Shmuel grows stronger. He witnesses the brutal beating that Pavel, the kitchen boy, suffers at the hands of the unpredictable Lieutenant Kotler. Furthermore, his mother has begun to realize some things after a very bad joke by the young lieutenant reveals the true source of the nauseating smoke coming from the camp's chimneys. Bruno also feels somewhat confused by the changes that his sister is undergoing who, influenced by her tutor's lessons and by the attraction she feels for Lieutenant Kotler, has lined the walls of her room with Nazi propaganda. The increasingly rarefied atmosphere of his house, along with the stories that Shmuel tells him, make Bruno wonder if something sinister is happening on the other side of the fence, and if his father is really the good man he had always believed.

Bruno is surprised to see Shmuel cleaning the glassware in his house and gives him a cake, but Lieutenant Kotler catches them together and accuses Shmuel of stealing food. Instead of defending his little friend from the arrogant soldier, Bruno tells Lieutenant Kotler that he has never seen Shmuel. Later, tormented by remorse, Bruno visits the fence several times to ask his friend for forgiveness, but the boy in the striped pajamas does not appear. When Shmuel finally returns, his face is marked by a terrible wound caused by Lieutenant Kotler's fist, and Bruno feels deeply sorry for him. However, Shmuel forgives him and they resume their friendship. Meanwhile, the relationship between Bruno's mother and father has become so strained that his father decides to send his family to an aunt who lives in Heidelberg. The move, which Bruno had desperately wanted since they arrived, is a hard blow for him as he realizes that he will have to part ways with his new best friend. In one of their last meetings, Bruno finds out that Shmuel's father has not appeared for three days. Bruno promises to help his friend look for his father. It seems like a good opportunity to compensate him for having betrayed him to the lieutenant. On the day of the transfer to Heidelberg,

Bruno sneaks out to see Shmuel loaded with a shovel and ready to embark on one last adventure. But once he crosses the fence, Bruno finds himself immersed in a terrifying race that will decide his fate, that of his friend and that of the innocents on the other side of the fence.