Werner Herzog co directed film about handicapped children in Germany in 1969. The point of the film is that the Germans don't want anything to do with the kids who are all but locked away. Even the fact that they are building special apartment blocks for the kids and their families is seen as segregation from the rest of society. Its a sad film in that the kids are clearly seen to be no different then normal kids, only with physical handicaps that reduce their mobility. Its a damning indictment of German society at the time especially when in the final minutes the film moves to America where we see a young man who moved to the US to get a college degree. He is a teacher and able to to go where and do what he wants thanks to an understanding society. Its a good film that that only suffers in retrospect since almost 40 years on we don't know how far Germany may or may not have come. (Its also eerie in that watching it it becomes very understandable how some of the Holocaust happened-the German's clearly wanted imperfection locked away.) 6.5 out of 10 because its dated in some ways.

Worthwhile early documentary from Herzog exploring the different treatment accorded to the disabled in Germany and the USA. Given the then fairly recent history of Germany there are resonances in this film that will not have been lost on its original audience.

Certainly at the time the film was made disabled rights were decades ahead in the US; among other things this is a powerful and compassionate campaigning documentary.

See it with "Land of Silence and Darkness" if you can. The two films, made in the same year, share a lot and in fact I believe the making of the second flowed directly from the first.

This is a one-hour documentary movie by German writer and director Werner Herzog from Almost 45 years ago. However, the version I watched was only slightly under 45 minutes. It basically deals with a group of disabled children and how they master their everyday lives on their own and with the help of trained guardians. As the title implies, this movie is not only focused on the kids life today, but also on their prospects in the future and comes the conclusion that these are pretty bad unfortunately. I personally would be interested in seeing a documentary film from today to see how they developed now that they are probably all in their 50s. It's a decent early effort by Herzog, who was still in his 20s when this was made. We hear Herzog ask some of the questions and his voice back then sounded already pretty much like his voice today. However, he does not narrate this film. The late and prolific German actor Rolf Illig takes this job here. In the end, they show a good example of how a disabled child developed into a successful adult. It says a lot that he had to go to the United States for that. Then again, many disabled people were killed in Nazi Germany (30 years before this documentary),so there were maybe not too many people to pick from in Germany. All in all, it's a decent watch, not among Herzog's worst, but not among his best either. Recommended.