30/5 — 5/6/2024
64th International Film Festival
for Children and Youth

Interviews

Interview BANGLA SURF GIRLS: “If it tastes like sand, you have to clean it”

In Cox’s Bazar, at the Bangladesh coast, a young girl is riding the waves on her surfboard, all confidence and grace. “All my dreams are about surfing”, says Shobe. But those dreams might be different from the future that is awaiting her and her...

Cássio P. Santos on VALENTINA: “She's just a girl trying to fully live her life”

Tonight, Valentina wants to party until she drops, as tomorrow she’ll be leaving the city. Maybe moving to the countryside will help her escape from the obstacles she faces everywhere as a transgender teen in Brazil – with peers and grown-ups, in...

Yoichi Narita on FOLLOW THE LIGHT: “She can’t help but get angry.”

Endless rice fields, as far as the eye can see. They appear as geometrical shapes, criss-crossed by the straight lines of empty roads in a region where everybody seems to be moving away – to start a new life in the city. Amidst all these rigid shapes,...

Barbara Kronenberg on MISSION ULJA FUNK: “Comedy comes in many different disguises”

Ulja Funk… the name sounds different, cool, almost… funky. Which is not the first impression you get when meeting the film’s main character, a rather nerdy girl with a passion for astronomy and a habit of speaking her mind straightforwardly, directly...

Majid Majidi on SUN CHILDREN: “Dreams flying up in the sky like pigeons”

When you see 12-year-old Ali handling his business in the streets of Tehran, you’re looking at a boy who walks and talks like a grown man. He and his friends work and live like adults. One day they are hired for an important task; it is said that a...