Set in 1942 Berlin, nine-year-old Bruno knows nothing about the meaning of the Final Solution and the Holocaust. He is totally unaware of the terrible cruelty his country is inflicting on the people of Europe. All he knows is that his father has been promoted and the family sent from a comfortable house in Berlin to an isolated area where there’s not much to do and nobody to play with. But everything changes when he meets Shmuel, a boy who lives a strange parallel existence on the other side of the fence, where everyone wears the same ‘striped pyjamas’ uniform. The friendship between Bruno and Shmuel will mark the end of their childhood innocence.