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Manuk ’ s primary goal is to be reunited with his father, to be with and like him, a soldier at war.

The games he plays throughout the film revolve around this goal, most obviously in the scene with the postman, in which Manuk ’ s inadvertent assault on the hapless cyclist is the result of a game in which he imagines he is with his father attacking an unseen enemy.

His search for the piece of metal in this opening part of the film is also directed towards the goal of reuniting with his father, if only symbolically through his imaginative play with the soldiers and tanks he builds with scavenged metal, his trophies of war.

His broadest, loosest goal is to play and to occupy the time he must spend alone – perhaps after school – until his mother returns home.

He must make his own entertainment, and he is resourceful.

He is driven by the desire to play, and this is what is enchanting about him.

He is imaginative and mechanically savvy, but still too young to understand what the return of his father ’ s possessions means.