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.
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