The Childhood of a Leader

2016 "Witness the birth of a terrifying ego."
6.2| 1h56m| NR| en
Details

The chilling story of a young American boy living in France in 1918 whose father is working for the US government on the creation of the Treaty of Versailles. What he witnesses helps to mold his beliefs – and we witness the birth of a terrifying ego.

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Reviews

SpecialsTarget Disturbing yet enthralling
Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.
Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
bobapples24 Non-story doesn't mean artistically brilliant. When you have a lot of arty looking pictures thrown together, that isn't a film, that's called visual masturbation. Might as well just go to a photography exhibition instead, not a cinema. Not for everyone? Not for anyone either. Maybe that's the whole idea, the intended audience is nobody in particular. It tries to be too clever, high brow or just disappear up its own backside. Shame because there are some good actors involved, or should I say, wasted on this. I know WW1 history and its ramifications, and this film doesn't really say anything about it, more like a pretentious mess that lumbers along for far too long. If anything, the dictators and their underlings all directly participated in the war, which shaped the future of history.
in1984 2.5 of 10. Rounded down instead of up. Given that there's a desperate need for more documentaries or even portrayals of fascism as it happened historically, the 1 remarkable thing about this film is that it completely fails to capture any unique element of fascism or fascists.As a film on the spoiled brats of leaders in general, it's not bad. Not original and not insightful either. It's more like the writer and director threw a tantrum together.It's not the worst possible rating essentially because the acting and music are entertaining enough to keep the film from causing your head from bouncing off the floor, but that's about it.
Rodney Larios This movie might have been decent if I was able to actually decipher some of the dialogue. The French was not subtitled and it was spoken through at least half the movie. The English was whispered behind music that was entirely too loud. But what bothered me most is there was not enough "story". Why did he have mental health issues? His mother seemed to love him, he was cared for by people close to him. He was not poor or abused, give me something! There is not even enough for me to provide a decent speculation. I think it could have been so much better, as much as I wanted to like it, I did not. The music tried to make it more suspend up than it actually was. The people that say this was "art" are just lame and use that as an excuse to give it better reviews. This movie had no substance and no matter how you try and describe it, the fact of the matter is that it doesn't!
kurtsonline Don't be fooled by some decent cinematography and a vague trailer. This movie is a total waste of 2 hours of your life. And $7 dollars which I contributed to this mess. It tries hard and fails harder. Are all Indie films going to be filmed in a few interiors of houses, drag on forever, and then reveal the occasional outdoor big budget scene? No budget is more like it. They just don't have the money to do anything different these days it seems and you'll get it if you sit through this debacle. This movie is a complete and utter failure to grasp and keep any smart audience's attention. If this is the directors/writers debut.....Then congrats on the investment, and don't see that happening much more ongoing. You could have done much more with what you were given. Bad on many many levels.