Wow! Nachricht aus dem All (4 Stars)

The title of this German film means "Wow! A Message from Space".

11-year-old Billie has just moved to a new town with her father. Her mother used to be an astronaut, but she died in a plane crash three years ago. She goes out and finds a scrap yard, where a boy called Dino is working in a bus. He's built a radio receiver/transmitter. He's received sounds which he believes are messages from aliens. Billie takes a recording home to her father, and he isn't impressed. He says it's just random static.

The children don't give up. Billie contacts the European Space Agency in France, where her mother once worked, and she's sent an invitation to a press conference. The children steal money from their parents to pay for a plane ticket. They interrupt the press conference and play the tape to the assembled reporters and scientists, but they're ridiculed.

Things are going on behind the scenes. A recent space probe has brought back a stone which isn't attracted by gravity. It just floats. The ESA leader wants to examine it for the purpose of science, but two dubious government agents want to steal the stone and possibly weaponize it. The children stay in the building after dark, but they have to hide from the agents who're also lurking in the building. They hide in a room, not realising they've climbed into an unmanned rocket due to launch on the next day.

The children are sent into space. They're discovered too late. The ESA tells them they'll send another rocket to rescue them. Until then they shouldn't touch anything. But kids will be kids. They find a powerful radio on board and try to contact alien life.

The cinema was about half full, parents with their children. It was noticeable that the parents laughed more than the children. Maybe the film was too complicated for the young children to understand? Or maybe the parents better understood the credibility gap. For the parents it was ridiculous that children should crawl into an unguarded rocket, but the children thought it was something normal.

This is one of the better children's films I've seen lately; and it's Made In Germany.