GER21 How I Taught Myself to Be a Child

Synopsis

A quirky story of growing up, searching for identity and finding one's true self, How I Taught Myself to be a Child is an imaginative coming-of-age film from director Rupert Henning.

Paul Silberstein (Valentin Hagg), the youngest son of a refined but deeply strange Austrian dynasty of confectionary millionaires, has a stunning imagination and a difficult legacy. In conservative Vienna in the late 1950s, Paul grows up surrounded by wealth but in a family devoid of any deep affection, with a harsh father (Karl Markovics, A Hidden Life, The Counterfeiters) and distant mother (Sabine Timoteo, Cloud Whispers).

Sent to a boarding school, Paul’s adventurous spirit is imprisoned by a world dominated by conservative values and Jesuit morality. With wit, enthusiasm and good luck, Paul discovers his own extraordinary ability to shape his realities and escape into his own world of dreams. Based on Austrian artist André Heller’s story “Wie ich lernte bei mir selbst Kind zu sein”, this is a bewitching tale about an eccentric and loveable young hero.