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Photo: Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)

If Sophie's Choice and Life Is Beautiful taught us anything, the surefire formula for a devastating tearjerker combines the Holocaust with child mortality, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas has both. Nine-year-old Bruno's family relocates near a concentration camp when his father, an SS officer, is given a promotion. Little Bruno sneaks off and befriends a prisoner his age near the edge of the camp, where they play checkers through the barbed wire. Although the two boys become great friends, little Bruno learns some hard truths about what his father does for a living, and why his new friend wears what he mistakenly assumes are pajamas.

Pictured: Jack Scanlon.