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The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

• At First Glance
• The Opening
• Point of View
• Characterisation
• Reading History
  • Remembering the Holocaust
  • History & Fiction
  • Points of view
  • Background
  • The Final Solution
  • Naming the unnameable
• Clip Activities
• Teachers' Notes

History and Fiction

Historical themes and novels have always attracted filmmakers. Yet treating history and adapting novels holds certain problems for the filmmaker. Similarly films and novels hold problems for the historian - even documentary films have to be treated carefully.

Think about the following questions:

1. What do you think is the main task of: a historian? A novelist? A feature filmmaker?
2. What do you think are the challenges that face a feature filmmaker when he/she comes to make a film based on a historical subject?
3. What do you think are the challenges for a filmmaker when he/she comes to make a film based on a novel?
4. In what ways are feature films reliable sources for historians and in what ways are they unreliable?
5. To what extent do you think feature films can help people access a time in history they may not have experienced themselves?

John Boyne talks about representing the historical events behind The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (Transcript)

DVD available now

© 2008 Miramax Film Corp. All Rights Reserved.

John Boyne talks about representing the historical events behind The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas:

"There is a great wealth of literature and resources out there for anyone who wants to study the Holocaust. There are documented interviews, there’s novels, there’s films, there’s plays. What I’ve found over the last couple of years travelling the world, talking to readers of the book but also talking at Holocaust museums and to Jewish groups and to community centres is that there’s never a point when enough has been done. I think that when this subject has been approached from any different angle, it gets people talking about it again, it gets people remembering those who died, those who lost loved ones during the Holocaust. So I think the point will never come where somebody…if somebody has a story to tell they can tell it, it’s important to keep doing that I think."