Zuckersand (2017)

East Germany in the late 1970s. Ten-year-old boys Jonas and Fred are best friends. Fred’s loyal-to-the-party parents, however, disapprove of their friendship because Jonas’s mother is raising her son as a Christian and has also applied for permission to leave the country. Despite being forbidden to, the friends continue to meet. When Fred is given a boomerang by the elderly neighbor Kaczmarek, the boys decide to dig a tunnel to Australia. They do so in an abandoned factory building near the border between East and West Germany, digging several meters down into the soft sand. At school, Fred’s talent as a runner is discovered, and arrangements are made for him to transfer to a special sports school. Since, as an elite athlete, Fred will be able to travel all over the world, he looks forward to it. He makes a date with Jonas in Australia, at the coordinates on the opposite side of the world from their tunnel. As Jonas is leaving the country, he realizes just before crossing the border that he has forgotten the note with the Australian coordinates at their tunnel site. He runs off and races home; his mother is prevented from following him. When Jonas retrieves the note, he slips into the hole and is buried by the sand that caves in after him. Only late that night does Kaczmarek figure out what happened, find the dead boy at the bottom of the tunnel, and carry him into the house. During the police questioning that follows, they go to great lengths to avoid implicating Fred’s family, so as not to jeopardize his athletic career. Because the tunnel is close to the border, an attempt to escape the country is initially suspected. Jonas, who officially no longer exists in East Germany after his departure, is disposed of in a wooden crate; his mother learns what happened only indirectly. Fred is not told anything. He finds a note from his mother with Jonas’s mother’s address and phone number in the West. When he secretly calls Jonas’s mother, he cannot understand her reaction. Only then do his parents tell him what happened. Later, during Fred’s running practice, the camera looks over Jonas’s shoulder as he watches Fred.