‘Homage’ is a column that recommends online video service (OTT) content worth watching on the weekend. It arrives every Saturday morning.

Do you have someone who remains only as a memory? Someone who shared a season of life with you but whom you can never see again. In your memory, that person stays forever unchanged, never growing old, while only you, the one who remembers, grow older year by year.

The film <White Bird> uses a frame narrative in which grandmother Sara tells her grandson Julian a story from her past, and that story is presented. The one who remains a memory for Sara is a boy named Julian, the same name as her grandson. What happened between the two of them, and why are they not together now?

Time turns back to the autumn of 1942. Young Sara was spending peaceful days in a village in France with her father, a surgeon, and her mother, a mathematics teacher. It was a comfortable life, neither excessive nor lacking.

But a bleak era does not permit an individual life to remain unscathed. At the time, Nazi Germany had occupied France, and the ground on which Sara’s Jewish family could live safely kept shrinking. As news arrived from Paris that Jews were being arrested and sent to concentration camps, signs reading ‘No Jews Allowed’ appeared at shops throughout the town where Sara lived.

At Sara’s school there is a boy who is called by a name other than his own, ‘Tohto’. ‘Tohto’ means ‘crab’, a derisive nickname given because of his gait. ‘Tohto’ uses crutches because he had polio.

The children take the crutches from ‘Tohto’ and torment him, and they jeer that because his father works in the sewers, ‘Tohto’ smells too. Sara only watches. Like the other children, she does not actively stop the bullying; she merely passes by.

One day, Nazi boots storm into the school. The teachers, sensing this, try to evacuate the Jewish students, but they are ultimately discovered. Sara alone manages to escape. It is thanks to ‘Tohto’. With a father who works in the sewers, ‘Tohto’ shows her a way out.

Only then does Sara learn ‘Tohto’s real name. It is Julian. Julian takes Sara to the barn at his house. He decides that his house is not safe, because a couple suspected of being Nazi informants live upstairs. And so Sara stays in the barn.

Life hiding in the barn, out of people’s sight, is anything but easy. Not knowing where her parents are eats away at her. Yet Sara perseveres. Julian and his parents become family to her. Julian tells Sara, who cannot go to school, what is being taught, and brings her news from the school. Julian’s mother brings food and clean clothes to the barn and spends time with Sara.

Hiding Sara is clearly dangerous for Julian and his family as well. If they are discovered, they could lose their lives. In fact, Julian falls into danger while bringing a sketchbook for Sara. To the distressed Sara, his mother says this: “In a dark era, such small things are what make us human.”

Sara tells Julian, “You are strong and brave. I have never seen anyone as brave as you,” speaking from the heart. Sara is frank. “If our places were reversed, I would not have helped you. So I am sorry.”

When Julian was being bullied as ‘Tohto’, Sara did nothing; she knows better than anyone how courageous it is that Julian is hiding her.

Grandmother Sara recalls it this way: “We saw the far edge of the hatred humans can show, and we learned that kindness requires great courage. In a world where that courage can even cost a life, to witness kindness is nothing short of a miracle.”

Young Sara realized this: Julian was not a benefactor or merely a friend, but her light. Yet the harsh era keeps trying to snatch that light away. What happened to Sara and Julian?

What was the barn to Sara? It was the darkest place, where at the sound of someone nearby even a small light had to be extinguished and she had to hold her breath, and at the same time the brightest place, where she spent time with Julian, who became a radiant light to her.

Someone’s kindness becomes a hiding place for someone, a strength to go on living, and a chance to share kindness with another. This weekend, how about recalling the gentle face that became a light in your darkest moment?

A spin-off of <Wonder>, it is based on R. J. Palacio’s graphic novel. It opened domestically in March last year, and about a year later, on the 2nd, it was released on the online video service (OTT) Wavve as a subscription film. Rated 12 and up. Running time 121 minutes.