European Children's
Film Association
Association Européenne du Cinéma
pour l'Enfance et la Jeunesse
Once 9 year old Samay has picked up the taste of film, he sneaks inside the theatre every day. He even infects his gang of friends with the cinema virus, and together they try to construct a film projector. LAST FILM SHOW invites you into an Indian countryside cinema, where the audience – chanting and clapping – actively takes part in every screening.
One day Birta, a strong and responsible girl with a passion for handball and playing guitar, overhears her mother on the phone, telling that she is so totally broke that there might be no Christmas this year. She simply can’t afford it in times of financial crisis. Birta, shocked by the news, wants to start raising money through various adventurous methods. But that’s not easy when you’re only eleven.
LAST DAYS AT SEA closes in on 12 year old Reyboy, living in Karihatag, an isolated village in the south of the Philippines at the frontline of climate change. In 2014 Venice Atienza visited the region with her camera, documenting how local people survive devastating storms. When she heard Reyboy would leave Karihatag at the end of summer to go to high school in the city, she decided to film the life he was leaving behind.
“A hoodie in a box“
Sihja, an outrageous young fairy, is surely one of a kind. When entering the life of Alfred, a shy and sensitive boy, she turns his whole world upside down. She messes up his room, scares off his friends and spits her milk all over the table. But even stranger things are happening. Birds are found dead on the streets, and both plants and people display rather peculiar behaviour. Something weird is going on at the local fertilizer factory!
“Realism allows me more than fantasy does“
Margot and Marguerite are both 12 years old, struggling with family, friends and other issues. But one lives in 1942 during the war, the other one in 2020. They tumble into each other’s lives via a magical trunk. One more thing they have in common: an absent father. Despite the 70 years that separate them, they embark together on an adventure on the edge of space and time.
In LA MIF (aka THE FAM), self-taught Swiss filmmaker Fred Baillif tells an impressive story about seven teenage girls with traumatic family experiences, living in a residential shelter in Geneva. Mif is a French slang word for family; although most of the girls have parents and siblings, public welfare has put them in a home.
Elizabeth Shepherd, who, as organiser of the Children’s Film Festival Seattle, often sought to connect with European festivals while firmly upholding the individuality and tradition of her own event, is leaving the festival in good hands.
Continue reading “Elizabeth Shepherd’s farewell to Festival Seattle”
It must have been since the signing of the Treaty of Versailles that so many big shots were gathered around one table. A digital roundtable, where the Industry Days of the Kristiansand Int’l Children’s Film Festival fired some questions at the crême de la crême of the European animation league. Here are some fragments of what they had to say on…