The Year My Parents Went on Vacation
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation has little to do with 12 months of visiting theme parks and KOA campgrounds. This sweet Brazilian heart warmer takes us back to 1970 when that country was going for its third World Cup just as her military rulers were cracking down on socialists. Michael Joelsas plays Mauro a boy with an angelic face but full of 10 year old mischief whose left wing parents are driven underground. They leave the boy in an ethnic district of Sao Paulo on the doorstep of his Jewish grandfather with instructions to tell anyone who asks that they are on vacation. However between their arrival and when they’d made extended babysitting arrangements the boy’s father’s father has a fatal heart attack. Thankfully there is a strong sense of community in grand dad’s predominantly Jewish occupied apartment building and the neighbours (many no strangers to hiding from dictators) rally to take care of the boy despite his sometimes rebellious nature brought on by the frustration of now double abandonment. The promise from his parents that they’ll return in time for the World Cup makes the anticipation all the more unbearable in this soccer mad country but will politics interfere to again disappoint Mauro?