Emil goes to Berlin to see his grandmother with a large amount of money and is offered sweets by a strange man that make him sleep. He wakes up at his stop with no money. It is up to him and a group of children to save the day.

Erich Kästner's beloved novel has been adapted for film or television six times since its publication in 1929; this 1935 British version was the first in English. Believed lost for decades, it was recently rediscovered by the BFI and has now been restored. The film moves the action from Berlin to London, where Emil goes to stay with his grandmother and cousin. Thereafter, the tale of Emil's adventures with a gang of streetwise London children faithfully follows the original plot.

While on a train from his home in the countryside to stay with his grandmother in London, a boy named Emil suspects that he has been robbed of his money by a suspicious-looking man in the same carriage wearing a bowler hat. In London, with the help of a gang of street children, he pursues the suspect until he is eventually able to recover the money.