Festivals keep their finger on the pulse of what’s happening, but also look ahead to what’s to come. The SCHLINGEL Festival pairs several international premieres with a “Coming Soon” session, featuring films that will soon start touring the festival circuit.
At the SCHLINGEL Festival, the impact of premiering films is evident in the conversations of the attending professionals. Several titles, like THE LAST WHALE SINGER (Reza Memari, Germany / Canada) and FRÄNK (Tõnis Pill, Estonia), caused a stir or raised expectations for the upcoming festival season. A SUMMER IN SUMMERBY is a feature film for a remarkably young audience (and those are rare). This gentle TV production is directed by Mara Eibl-Eibesfeldt, who also made THABO AND THE RHINO CASE in 2023. The lead actor in that film, Litlhonolofatso Litlhakanyanenow, now stars in another premiering film: in BIRD BOY (by Joel Soisson, South Africa/USA), he acts side by side with an ostrich. On set, he rode around on the bird’s back, while the camera feasted on the wide landscape. MY STEPMOM IS A WITCH (by Joëlle Desjardins Paquette, Canada) fits perfectly into the list of La Fête productions, which producer Dominic James ardently advocated in previous editions. In this new episode, a girl discovers that her new mother – as the title suggests – is a witch, but perhaps preferable to all other options.
In the Coming Soon section, Germany received a remarkable amount of attention. Five of the eight productions presented were home-grown, and often those were sequels to well-known franchises (CHECKER TOBI, BIBI BLOCKSBERG…). Other productions piqued curiosity, like HORSE ON A STICK (by Sonja Maria Kröner, Germany), an “Outstanding Children’s Film” about hobbyhorse riding and how it puts a long-standing friendship to the test. And SORRY (by Frederike Migom, director of BINTI, Belgium) promises to be a cinematographic playground about the complex dynamics of growing up in a chaotic world.