Brothers of the Wind

Lukas is a boy growing up in the South Tyrolean Alps during the 1960s, in a home marked by silence rather than warmth. His father, a hunter, has withdrawn since the death of Lukas's mother, and the two have long since stopped speaking to each other. In the mountains, an eagle pair raises two chicks; the stronger one pushes its weaker sibling out of the nest, and Lukas finds the fallen bird and secretly takes it in. He names the eaglet Abel, raises it behind his father's back, and is helped by Danzer, a forest ranger who understands wild animals and gradually introduces the boy to their world. Abel grows, and the time comes when Lukas must teach the eagle to fly and return it to the wild, risking the loss of the companion he has come to depend on.

The film is directed by Gerardo Olivares and Otmar Penker, from a screenplay by Joanne Reay. It followed Olivares's Among Wolves (2010) and preceded The Lighthouse of the Orcas (2016). Manuel Camacho plays Lukas, with Jean Reno as Danzer, Tobias Moretti as Keller and Eva Kuen as Maria. It was produced by Walter Köhler and Philip-Jaime Alcazar for Terra Mater Factual Studios and FilmVergnuegen, and released in December 2015. The worldwide box office take, around four million dollars, is modest for an international release. On TMDB it holds a 7.1 rating from about two hundred votes, a small sample that suggests a limited but appreciative audience for this Austrian family adventure.