The 12-year-old orphan Max is mediated by the village priest, hired from a children's home to the farm family Bösiger in the Emmental. He takes the place of a Verdingbuben, who died recently under mysterious circumstances. Max has to work hard on the less productive farm. After another Verdingkind is housed on the farm, the 15-year-old girl Berteli, there is tension between the two children. Increasingly, however, Max used to having friendly feelings Berteli.

The barley harvest is from the bad and rotten potatoes in the field. The farmer succumbs to alcohol. For by the neighbors Max is physically abused, he was cuffed at the slightest provocation or whipped with a belt. He has to sleep in the pigsty. Only the game on his hand organ gives him recognition and gives him joy.

In school, the teacher covered the traces of physical abuse. It is committed to the mayor and the minister for Max, but what his life is even more difficult for the farmer's family. After he hears a note played on a bandoneon tango on the radio, he is totally fascinated by Argentina.

The farmer's son Jacob insulted and beats Max night he enters the chamber of Berteli and raped her regularly. When she becomes pregnant, the woman forces her to drink a liquid that leads to a miscarriage in the same night. The next morning, the girl's body is found in the cesspool of the court.

In the police investigation affirms the woman to have wanted only the best for the girl to the farmer the policeman passes the bottle labeled "castor oil". This smells of the bottle and says meaningfully that an investigation of incidents was needed. Max says he saw the peasant woman in the night in question with a bloody underwear in the house.

Max does not want to stay on this farm. The next night he breaks up. A Störmetzger (Battle servant) in the village gives him something to eat, and listen to him play the organ at hand. The twenty francs, he gives Max, are sufficient for the journey to Basel, where he goes on a Rhine to the North Sea. There he hires a ship that will take him to Argentina. In intellectual conversation with Berteli he told her that he had to work hard on board, but will not be beaten. When eating all sit together and each get the same food as the captain.

In the final scene is a white-haired Bandeonspieler a concert with an orchestra.

Der Verdingbub ist ein Spielfilm des Schweizer Regisseurs Markus Imboden aus dem Jahr 2011. Die Handlung spielt zu Beginn der 1950er Jahre und schildert das Leben von zwei Verdingkindern im Emmental.
 
Die Filmpremiere fand am 25. Oktober 2011 in Bern statt. Kinostart war am 3. November 2011. Mit über 200'000 Zuschauern war er nach neun Wochen der erfolgreichste Schweizer Spielfilm seit Die Herbstzeitlosen. In Deutschland startete der Film in hochdeutscher Synchronfassung am 25. Oktober 2012 in den Kinos.