ECFA was updated by several festivals about the different formats they choose to carry on under difficult circumstances. Vilnius, Guangzhou and Ciné Junior all found solutions.
The 15th Int’l Vilnius Film Festival for Children & Youth presented an excellent selection of titles online, with juries handing out awards in different age categories. The professional jury’s award went to LIFE WITHOUT SARA AMAT (Laura Jou, Spain), the young people’s juries awarded the bold Irish-Lithuanian co-production CASTLE (aka PILIS, Lina Lužytė, 14+), H IS FOR HAPPINESS (John Sheedy, Australia, 10+) and THE CLUB OF UGLY CHILDREN (Jonathan Elbers, the Netherlands, 7+) because “this film makes you realise you can’t categorise people by their appearance, everyone is beautiful in their own way. Children around the world are suffering because they don’t fit in, but perfect people don’t exist and you don’t need to look good to be a hero.”
In the 15th China Int’l Children’s Film Festival in the southern metropole Guangzhou, 17 national and 17 international films were screened in cinemas for a live audience. Most screenings took place during weekends, which resulted in a growing audience. Due to health restrictions, drastic cutbacks were made in the number of student jury members (20 instead of 200), though still thoroughly discussing their favourite titles. Among them were both international productions such as H IS FOR HAPPINESS (Australia), TEAM MARCO (USA), MY FRIEND ALEXIS (Chile), and RAGGIE (Estonia, Denmark) and domestic films such as RED SCARF FLOATING, RUIXI LOVES XIAOBAI, KUNG FU GIRL, and DEPTHS OF COLOURFUL CLOUDS.
Due to the closure of French cinemas the 31st edition of the Festival Cine Junior was postponed, however a full-length features and short films programme is maintained as an online competition, from January 27-February 9, 2021. During these two weeks professionals are invited to watch competition films on the Festival Scope Pro platform. A complete overview of titles can be found on the festival’s (English) website.
The dates for the postponed Cine Junior festival will be determined later.
information: Deborah Mattana (communication@cinemapublic.org).
