Perhaps the biggest problem with most of the reviews is that they take a partisan view of the Greek Civil War of the late '40s. The view presented sympathetically in the movie is that of the loyalists. But to call them the "Freedom Fighters", since they wanted the re-establishment of the monarchy seems peculiar for Americans. As for the book and movie "documenting" what happened, it presented one side and who could blame Gage for promoting his vision of the truth when the Communists killed his mother. But war is war- the complete breakdown of civilization. Quite often both sides do horrific things, just as happened in Iraq recently, where we are certainly far from being blameless. but don't wantonly kill as many as the "insurgents." Or another Civil War, Viet Nam where incidents such as Mi Lai were sign that we were not "saviors." The facts of the Greek Civil War are presented below, regarding the forced population of children: "In 1948, the two conflicting sides evacuated children and young persons from the territories they had conquered in the northwestern part of the country. The royalists transferred up to 30,000 children to the south of the country, and the communists sent about 25,000 children across the border to Yugoslavia where they were primarily accommodated in shelters in several Yugoslav republics. In the period afterwards, they were most frequently sent to the so-called countries with popular democracies Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as in the Democratic Republic of Germany. Each of the conflicting parties accused the other that it deported these children against both their will and that of their parents, i.e. relatives. The two sides were also accusing each other that the other side was doing this in order to perform an ethno-national transformation i.e. "to turn the Macedonians into Greeks" and vice versa. "http://www.newbalkanpolitics.org.mk/napis.asp?id=19&lang=English So take the movie for what it is. A presentation of one side...not necessary propaganda for right wingers or the tale of "freedom fighters." Rather the sad tale of a boy who lost his mother in a Civil War. Not a bad movie, but not brilliant.
