Get tickets for Emil and the Detectives, and opera glasses — some of the child actors are tiny

It starts with a brilliant joke. We’re in the Weimar Republic in 1929. Little Emil Tischbein is listening to his mother and a moaning neighbour, Mrs Wirth, lamenting Germany’s loss of moral fibre. Mrs Wirth cites a recent gangster film whose depravity shocked her to the core. ‘We saw it three times,’ she adds.  Forewarned about thieves and hoodlums, Emil travels to Berlin carrying a precious cargo of 140 marks. A sinister stranger robs him on the train and he befriends a gang of Berlin school-kids who set off to retrieve his cash.

Erich Kästner’s classic is directed with great style by Bijan Sheibani, who captures much of the book’s verve and atmosphere. The costumes are terrific, with the boys kitted out in pleated jackets, knee-length breeches, woollen socks and walking boots. They look like Mallory on his way to base camp. The paranoid jumpy mood of the German capital comes across powerfully.