Children play at adults: Swiss director Roland Colla deals with his own traumatic experiences.

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Two couples on a camping trip in Tuscany are the focus of Rolando Collas disturbing movie: Vincenzo and Adriana are about to separate because Adriana is tired of Vincenzo's psychopathic bursts of violence. Meanwhile, their 12-year-old son Nic makes friends with Marie, a girl a bit older than him who's on vacation with her mother, who won't tell her who her father is. The children's relationship slowly develops, but not without its own painful moments - mirroring the broken world of their parents.

In the portrayal of this troubled world, Giochi d'estate goes extremely far, showing domestic violence and violence among children with no holds barred. Rolando Colla's fourth feature film is dense with atmosphere, a consistent and formally strong coming-of-age story with an exceptional ensemble cast of children, that is still somewhat discomfiting.