The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

An emotional and harrowing World War Two drama about an eight-year-old German boy (Asa Butterfield) who befriends a Jewish lad (Jack Scanlon)

An emotional and harrowing World War Two drama about an eight-year-old German boy (Asa Butterfield) who befriends a Jewish lad (Jack Scanlon).

Initially upset when his father David Thewlis's new job takes the family away from 1940s Berlin to live in the country, Butterfield's Bruno soon makes friends with Scanlon's Shmuel.

But Bruno doesn't understand why Shmuel can't come out of the farm he lives on to play and why he's always wearing pyjamas.

The devastating subject of the Holocaust is subtly and intelligently told here through a child's eyes, but prepare yourself for a heart-rending finale.

Although the shocking, slow unravelling of the reality of the world around the boy is lost on film - as we can see what the lad clearly doesn't understand - it is still a faithful adaptation of John Boyne's bestseller.