An exceptional drama from Slovakia, Broken Promise recounts the compelling and true story of teenager Martin Friedmann’s escape from deportation several times between 1938 and 1945. Born as the youngest of five sons in the family of a poultry trader, Martin starts off life carefree, playing soccer and even assisting with the bell-ringing in the local church. At the outset, Martin and his family are naïve to the imminent Nazi threat, even when the recently established Slovak state allies itself with Hitler. As Martin’s Bar-Mitzvah approaches, life begins to change and Martin’s family leaves his life one by one. Some escape to Palestine, some are sent to Slovak work camps and others to concentration camps in Poland. Martin’s own calling takes him away from home and family to starvation, hard labour and illness to a new identity (Petrá?sek), and to armed combat where he joins the Partisan resistance to take up arms against the Nazis. With plenty of thrills and twists along the way, Broken Promise unravels the process of transformation of a boy into an adult; all the circumstances which help Martin to live by stressing his joie-de-vivre despite the pitfalls of the post-WW II era.