The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008)

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas rating: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic

IMDb7.7/10· 272K votes

Rotten Tomatoes65%

Metacritic55%

TMDb7.8/10· 8K votes

With 65% on Rotten Tomatoes, backed by 7.7/10 on IMDb and 55/100 on Metacritic, critical reception of this film has been mixed.

About The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

When his family moves from their home in Berlin to a strange new house in Poland, young Bruno befriends Shmuel, a boy who lives on the other side of the fence where everyone seems to be wearing striped pajamas. Unaware of Shmuel's fate as a Jewish prisoner or the role his own Nazi father plays in his imprisonment, Bruno embarks on a dangerous journey inside the camp's walls.

Cast of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

• 

  Asa Butterfield

  as Bruno

• 

  Vera Farmiga

  as Mother

• 

  David Thewlis

  as Father

• 

  Jack Scanlon

  as Shmuel

• 

  Amber Beattie

  as Gretel

• 

  Rupert Friend

  as Lieutenant Kotler

• 

  David Hayman

  as Pavel

• 

  Sheila Hancock

  as Grandma

• 

  Richard Johnson

  as Grandpa

• 

  Cara Horgan

  as Maria

• 

  Jim Norton

  as Herr Liszt

• Z

  Zac Mattoon O'Brien

  as Leon

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas facts

Budget

$12.5M

Box office

$20.4M

Our take on The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Mark Herman's 2008 drama views the Holocaust through the bewildered eyes of Bruno, a young German boy whose family relocates from Berlin to an isolated house in Poland when his Nazi father takes up a new post. Wandering beyond the garden, Bruno strikes up a friendship with Shmuel, a boy on the other side of a fence where everyone wears striped pyjamas, never grasping that his new companion is a Jewish prisoner or the part his father plays in that captivity. Restrained and quietly devastating, it suits viewers open to a difficult historical drama that trades spectacle for a child's-eye innocence and the tragedy it cannot comprehend.