Category: News

“The Hall of Mirrors is never empty, but now it was”

A good story can be told in many ways, yet it always remains a good story. The story of MY LIFE IN VERSAILLES has already been told in a short film, a TV series, and now in a feature-length animated film. One element that the three formats have in common is director Nathaniel H’Limi, who came to present his film at the Filem’On Festival.

After her parents’ passing, eight-year-old Violet goes to live with her uncle Régis, whom she barely knows. He is a gruff man who works as a maintenance worker at the Palace of Versailles. After a difficult start, the two are getting to understand each other better and better. Against the backdrop of the majestic palace, with an occasional excursion to the streets of Paris, they fight for each other’s future and grow ever closer as a family. A family of two!

There’s a short film (2019), a TV series (2024), and a feature-length animated film (2025), all titled MY LIFE IN VERSAILLES. How are they connected?

Nathaniel H’Limi: Nine years ago, we responded to a call for projects, launched by France Télévisions. At the time, most of their young audience’s fiction featured little boys as heroes. Now they were looking for a heroine in a contemporary story. As an illustrator and graphic designer, I had never worked in animation before. Screenwriter Clémence Madeleine-Perdrillat had never directed an animated film, and our producer had no prior experience in animation. Three inexperienced people with a shared desire to work on a global story we deeply cared about. For me, drawing stories has always been a dream, and that is what I did for nine years. The result was a short film which went on to win the Jury Award at Annecy, giving the project its international exposure.

How did that help put you on the map?

H’Limi: With festival selections and a small-scale cinema release in France and Belgium. Every time during post-screening discussions, the same question came up: What happens next? Even France Télévisions mentioned a possible sequel. Recognising the ideal format for young audiences, we suggested making that sequel into a TV series. Doing a series requires strong shoulders: it takes years, and it’s super complicated to finance, even if everyone loves your project.

Were you able to maintain the same quality standard as in the short film?

H’Limi: Not entirely. My graphic style may appear simple, but it is entirely handcrafted. The short film was done with gouache and ink on paper, with all 300 sets drawn by hand. With the money that our producer was able to piece together, we spent five years making the series, which had its life on the small screen. Which felt somewhat frustrating; we believed our story deserved its place on the big screen. We re-edited the 2h20 of footage from the series into a 1h20 feature. Moving away from the series’ episodic approach was a challenge; much of the credit for that goes to Clémence. That’s the genesis story of these three different formats under the same title. Or even four, if we include the book adaptation.

How much footage from the original short did you reuse?

H’Limi: All of it! The first 26 minutes of the feature are exactly the short film. Since its release six years ago, our audience has completely renewed itself. Aside from the animation incrowd, nobody will recognise those 26 minutes as a separate short.

VERSAILLES must have taken up all your time for years!

H’Limi: For Clémence and me, this film marks the end of a nine-year-long period. This is the moment to understand that everything we did made sense. You would be surprised how deeply this story resonates inside us. It carries traces of our personal lives and of everything we went through in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015. 

I hadn’t realised those attacks were so present in the short film. 

H’Limi: That’s where the entire project began! You can sense it from the streetscape: the writing on the walls, the presence of police officers, the Place de la République covered with flowers,… Both visually and narratively, our story is grounded in reality. Those attacks have marked us all – every adult in France remembers exactly where they were on November 13, 2015. 

From that point on, you follow the rhythm of the seasons. 

H’Limi: We were very precise with our timeline, the subtle passage of time, and the shifts between seasons. You might feel it rather than actually see it. When Violette runs across the Place de la République, you can tell from the light that winter is approaching. The next time she passes through, clouds of cold breath are coming from her mouth. Two years later, the flowers have disappeared from the square, and skaters glide through it under bright sunshine.

The feature film adds several layers to the story, particularly dealing with adult issues.

H’Limi: Children suffering from adult problems is a universal thing. Clémence approaches this with humour, while staying close to the painful truth. Régis, for instance, was unable to fulfil certain expectations due to physical limitations, and now finds himself judged by his parents. It’s a situation that resonates in many families. The expectations that parents and children place on one another are exactly why we all go to see psychologists.

Did your parents see the film?

H’Limi: They did, just yesterday! They’ve also followed the series. What matters to me is that these themes resonate with so many families, and I’m happy to depict them in the movie.

The scenes with the grandparents are deeply uncomfortable. Everyone sits around the table in silence, and when they speak, they avoid saying what really matters.

H’Limi: There’s an elephant in the room! Finding the right rhythm for that scene was hard. You want the young audience to engage with a slow scene that relies entirely on glances and gazes, on shoulders, on Régis crushing sugar with his hand… They are all grieving, but no one speaks about it except Violette, who brings the naive joy of an 8-year-old to the table. In fact, it’s one of the scenes we worked on the most.

No one seems able to find the right tone to speak to a grieving child.

H’Limi: Those terrorist attacks were so violent, so unfair, so horrible that people didn’t know how to talk about it. That’s what made us want to make this film: to find a way to talk about it at a children’s level. Today, most children don’t even know what a terrorist attack is, and I find it very difficult to explain. Our core message is: things like this shouldn’t happen, but they did happen, and we need to acknowledge it. Adults and children “read” those scenes very differently.

What makes Paris feel like Paris in your film? 

H’Limi: Clémence and I share an approach in our methods: we devour the real. She feeds her writing with fragments of everyday life, conversations overheard in cafés or among friends. And I’m a real-life drawer. I had never designed a film set before, which honestly made me panic. So I began researching obsessively. The whole film, graphically, draws from that. The grandparents’ apartment is inspired by my parents-in-law’s home. Régis’ house comes from one of the forest rangers’ houses in Versailles. For Violette’s run through the city streets, I explored the area around Place de la République and selected a nearby school and house. I retraced her route on Google Maps and photographed everything. For my drawings, reality is like the bones and muscles that give structure to the human body.

Do you use the same approach for creating your characters?

H’Limi: Absolutely, they are hyper-inspired by everything around us. Violette’s character is partly based on Clémence as a child. For Régis, I asked myself what I would look like if I were two metres tall, weighed 100 kilos, and had a beard. I set up a mirror in front of my desk and acted out every single expression or frown.

His face is just hair and a big nose! That’s not you. 

H’Limi: That was me, at a certain point in my life, when I was younger and eating too much. Régis is built around circular forms: his shoulders, hair, beard, nose, fingers—even his furniture—everything is rounded. In a way, he’s just a doodoo. By contrast, Violette’s design is more angular. Their shapes and colours complement each other; yellow and orange versus blue and black. As I mentioned earlier, what you don’t notice, you will still feel it.

The shape of his torso is almost square, as big as he is.

H’Limi: Clémence wanted him to have something of an ogre about him; the ogre and the princess being classic figures in fairy tales. His body reflects his personal history: broad shoulders from a physically demanding job, thin legs from his past as a dancer. Even today, Régis remains a challenge for me to draw. I’m always working from reality, and his particular shape doesn’t exist in real life. 

With your attention to correctness, Versailles must have been a challenge!

H’Limi: We were lucky… Versailles is always packed. It’s almost impossible to take reference photos among 15,000 visitors. But once production began, COVID–19 hit. The authorities in Versailles reached out to us: the castle is closed to the public; this might be your chance! Experiencing Versailles completely empty was extraordinary, almost unreal. The Hall of Mirrors is never empty, but now it was! 

Next thing you tell me is that ‘the spider’ (the underground network of water pipes that becomes one of the film’s key locations) really exists!?

H’Limi: It does! It’s not the kind of place a child would explore alone. But every movie needs a touch of magic. At the time, Paris felt sombre and dark, whereas Versailles brought light, oxygen, and colour into the movie. Versailles was a pretext at first, but gradually became a much more layered element of the film.

Decorations in Versailles are so overwhelming that ultimately, you simply seem to give up on clear lines.

H’Limi: When I show my drawings to students, they often go like: “Wow, that’s so well done.” But it’s not. If you look closely, you’ll see nothing but messy scribbles. Together, they look like something grand, but it’s just strokes. Early on, Clémence and I agreed not to strive for perfection. I often describe our style as ‘realistic, but poorly executed’. 

There is a striking scene in which Violette and Régis sit by the fire, burning leaves. From this game of shadows and silhouettes, a new story emerges.

H’Limi: When we presented our storyboard to France Télévisions, they said: “Ah, so this is the obligatory graphic ‘delirium’.” Apparently, in every animated film, the filmmaker at one point wants a graphic delirium, which allows him to enter another universe and go all the way. But we didn’t go all wild; we stayed close to the emotional core of the text, which is very delicate. This is a pivotal moment when Violet and Régis understand what binds them. The flames were created by hand – I asked for a computer-generated fire, and then redrew it myself to match our graphic language. Creating that scene was one of the most exciting moments of the entire film.

What makes it their perfect moment to connect?

H’Limi: They connect through a shared sense of loss. Violette understands she’s not the only one in mourning. And Régis realises that he doesn’t take care of Violette because he has to, but because he wants to.

What role does Geneviève, the rather rigid welfare worker, play in the story?

H’Limi: She is a hyper-anxious, stressed lady who compulsively repeats everything she says three times (a trait inspired by one of Clémence’s aunts). It took me quite a while to bring that character to life; in fact, she only really came together once we found the right voice, performed by the famous French actress Anne Alvaro. At the last moment, Geneviève underwent a makeover. The film had taken such a toll on me that my hair started turning grey. Surrounded by towering piles of paperwork, it felt unrealistic that Geneviève wouldn’t have grey hair as well. So I changed it from brown to white. She was actually a funny character to draw; she brings a good dose of lightness and humour to the story. 

French animation seems to be thriving at the moment, with a strong output of shorts and international co-productions. 

H’Limi: I’m not a producer; I’m just a modest filmmaker, observing what’s going on around me, rather than being really part of it. From what I observe, wonderful series and films are being made by dedicated production companies, such as MIYU Productions (with whom we began this project), and Sacreblue. Many schools have developed animation programmes with a growing number of students. The downside is that many people with a training in animation cannot find a job; I see young talents struggling to enter the industry. So while the creative energy is very much alive, the economic reality is more fragile.

Is there still room today for a film like MY LIFE IN VERSAILLES?

H’Limi: We’re currently developing a new feature, an adaptation of the book ‘Jean-Chat voit dans le noir’, which I illustrated. Our producer has already warned us that, at the moment, 2D feature animation in France is not the safest investment. So many films are being made, but the financial return is not exactly impressive. Even a remarkable film like CHICKEN FOR LINDA struggled to find an audience. But I’m not an expert. My role is simply to draw stories, and I work as hard as I can to make that work. We may have to fight a bit for our position, but I’m still confident.

“I usually find chaotic people very enjoyable”

The life of 12-year-old Olivia is turned upside down overnight, now that she must learn to look after her younger brother. Fortunately, she gets help from her cheerful neighbours. Together, they turn every task into a game and every day into an unforgettable moment.

OLIVIA AND THE INVISIBLE EARTHQUAKE focuses on a fascinating group of children in the suburbs of Barcelona. The monsters they battle are the everyday problems of people struggling to keep their heads above water in uncertain times. If the film has a fairy-tale quality, it is to be found in friendship and solidarity among families and ‘kids from the block’. This Spanish co-production, which received a nomination for the ECFA Awards at the AleKino! festival, is the successful result of a quest to strike a balance between stylish design and a limited budget. That’s what Assistant Director Dorien Schetz tells us.

You are the one to define the scope of our conversation. As Assistant Director, I don’t know exactly what your responsibilities are. 

Dorien Schetz: The story of the film, the design, and the sets are already fixed when I become involved in a project. My job is to supervise the organisation, and I prefer to do that for stop-motion films. That’s what I’ve been doing throughout my entire professional career, first at the Beast Animation stop-motion studio, and then on the sets of SAUVAGES (Claude Barras) and OLIVIA. I don’t choose projects based on content, but on the technique used.  

How much stop-motion is OLIVIA AND THE INVISIBLE EARTHQUAKE? 

Schetz: 100% stop-motion! 

I don’t think so! I saw a bit of shadow play, I saw sand animation…

Schetz: It’s not 100% puppet animation, but stop-motion is about bringing dead objects to life. Like sand! Mama Fatou’s roots are beautifully illustrated in a piece of sand animation with a leopard and an African village. We had César Diaz on our team, one of my favourite animators and an absolute master of sand animation. It would be a shame not to use that skill in the film. That shadow play was filmed on set with transparent paper and then animated in stop-motion. The puppets and sets are real… You find stop-motion in many different forms.

Without too many technical gadgets.

Schetz: This is a European low-budget film, but within our limited budget, the whole team has created something beautiful, purely artisanal, and with minimal post-production. The scene in which Olivia ends up in a dream world was created entirely by hand: the lighting was prepared, the effects were set up by the lighting team, and the animation was done layer by layer. In Barcelona, there is a brand of lightly sparkling water that is sold in bottles with a special relief pattern. The camera team used this to create a lighting effect. You can also do this with a lens that costs €10,000, but we did it with a bottle. Or we animated a candle flame with papier-mache on a flat plate, manually, frame by frame.

There is a striking shot in which we look through the camera of a mobile phone, and the hands are enlarged to fill the entire screen. They are so delicately made, with dirty edges under the nails.

Schetz: Hands are madness! I’ve never seen such perfect miniature hands, so delicate. They broke easily, so people on the team were constantly busy making hands. 

The film is set in Barcelona. How am I supposed to know? The location is never mentioned.

Schetz: It can’t be anywhere else but Barcelona. You can tell from every detail: the pavements, the bollards in the street, the lampposts, the architecture of the houses. The set design team did a fantastic job. They even smuggled those flowered Flor de Barcelona tiles into the film.

From now on, my favourite place in Barcelona is Calle Futur 33, the street corner that is often shown in the film. Sometimes with people around, sometimes deserted…

Schetz: That’s a brilliant example of the work of our amazing team. Despite the limited budget, they got the most out of it. The result is stunning. Look at all those details: posters on the walls, notes with telephone numbers, a message about a runaway cat, the classic ACAB graffiti… Everything is there! The sets were made in Valencia. When they were delivered to Barcelona, we stood there staring with our mouths open. It was mind-blowing! The largest set was the street map, which was about 60 square metres. And that was just one of twelve! You can keep an interior set small, but as soon as you go outside, the size grows exponentially.

Depending on the time of day, the horizon changes colour beautifully, with shades of orange and purple.

Schetz: Credit for this goes to the camera and lighting team, who chose the right lighting mood for each sequence, as directed by DoP Isabel de la Torre. The director determines what time of day the scene takes place and what the weather conditions are like. Then the team gets to work creating the right atmosphere, which they maintain throughout the entire sequence, so that the sun is in the same place and the shadows fall correctly. 

You’ve already passed on my compliments to someone else three times. Is there anything I can say that might be a compliment to you?

Schetz: That the film was finished on time. I moved to Barcelona in January, the shoot was due to start in April, and we had to be ready by the end of December. I knew in advance: we have 8 months of animation in 12 to 14 studios, 8 animators, 12 Olivia dolls, 10 Tims, 5 Lamines, 3 Vanessas, 2 Kikis, 5 mothers, and one Superspunk. We have to shoot so many seconds in so many sets… You have to get all the teams – set, puppets, camera, animation, direction, production, rigging, and post-production – to work together without everything exploding. And if something goes wrong, e.g. a puppet breaks, you have to anticipate very quickly. I have to make the perfect puzzle out of all those elements within a certain time limit. I succeeded in doing that, and I’m quite proud of it. 

How does the assistant director relate to the director in the organisational chart?

Schetz: My main task is to take care of all the practical stuff, so that the director only has to think about the creative aspect. Which animator will make which shot with which puppet? It’s all planned out! That allows the director to concentrate fully on the emotions or the action in that shot. I do this job because I am frighteningly well organised. And because I love animated films, and many people in that sector are less well-organised. So I can help them. I don’t mind being surrounded by a bunch of chaotic people. I usually find chaotic people very enjoyable, and they are grateful for someone like me. We complement each other.

You made an interesting choice for the dolls’ basic hair.

Schetz: It’s usually wool, stiffened with iron wire, so that some hairs are still movable. The choice of material is determined by the available time and budget, in consultation with the director and the puppet designer. If the choice of material makes the animators’ work too difficult, it puts the brake on the number of seconds you can deliver per day. 

If I were to ask you a similar question about the eyes, I would probably get the same answer.

Schetz: It is always the result of artistic and budgetary choices. You choose expressive eyes, but you also have to be able to work with them easily. The most difficult thing about Olivia was her glasses. They make her eyes difficult for the animators to handle, especially because we wanted to adapt the eyelids in every position. You see those animators fiddling with eyelids behind those glasses with a small stick, and then I’m glad I’m not an animator. Last year, on the set of SAUVAGES, all the characters had super-large eyes. That’s not only an artistic choice, but also a practical one, because it allows you to work faster.

The film features a few remarkable fantasy scenes, including a particularly striking one in which blue whales appear. Do these fit into the overall picture seamlessly, or do you need to develop a separate design for them?

Schetz: A shot in which they play Eskimo is much more complex than two characters simply talking, because you are working in different layers: the northern lights are one layer, the iceberg, the wavy water, the whale, the dolls… We estimate about four seconds of animation per day, but here you have to calculate four seconds for each of the five layers, so you’re working five times as long. What’s more, the whale was built on a small scale so that it wouldn’t be too unwieldy. It’s animated on green key so that it can be scaled afterwards. 

The co-production line-up looks quite interesting, with Chile joining the usual suspects.

Schetz: That’s not so strange. No European country can produce a feature-length animated film on its own. Such a film is, by definition, an international co-production. Spain and Chile couldn’t secure the financing. So France, Belgium and, in the end, Switzerland joined in.

And completed the film in eight months! Isn’t that incredibly fast?

Schetz: We did SAUVAGES in six months! That’s fast. But OLIVIA did stay within the time frame, at an average of 3.2 seconds per animator per day.

Because you strictly ensured that everyone met their quota! 

Schetz: Indeed, strictly but fairly.

Gert Hermans

“When cinema creates something that wasn’t there before”

In the middle of Palermo, Sicily, stands an old, abandoned kindergarten. People say the place is haunted and should be avoided. But three children – Angelo, Mary, and Rosy – find a secret hideout there, a safe haven where, out of sight of the world, they share their imagination and fears. Until their refuge threatens to be demolished. Three directors (Virginia Nardelli, Stefano La Rosa & Danny Biancardi) follow in their footsteps – we spoke with two of them at the Filem’On Festival in Brussels.

The documentary was filmed over a long period of time, but feels like a snapshot, a crucial moment in a young life, with a foreshadowing of the life that awaits them, and which they are already reflecting on. With compassionate understanding, the filmmakers observe this moment between hope and sorrow.

For a children’s audience, THE CASTLE might be a film about building up something, while for me, it was more about losing something. 

Stefano La Rosa: As an adult, you might see something you already lived through but lost, and now you remember it. That evokes a certain melancholy. 

Virginia Nardelli: When the kindergarten was destroyed, it felt like we lost something so beautiful. But it’s also a positive thing: a school will now be reopened. By doing a good thing for the community, a sweet dream for the children was shattered.

Where exactly is this story situated?

Nardelli: In Palermo, in the heart of the city, but the neighbourhood feels suburban, because the community completely ignores it. There are no shops, no bars; no public transport goes there. The only people on the streets are those living there. If you accidentally ended up there, you would be approached on the street: “Sir, I think you’ve taken a wrong turn. Were you looking for somewhere else?”

La Rosa: There is only one road leading there, which winds around the kindergarten and the square. On that road, kids are riding their quad bikes and scooters all day long; that’s how they spend most of their time. 

Groups of children hang around. In one scene, they are giving Angelo a rough time. That felt unpleasant, or was it just a harmless game?

Nardelli: That was an observation of how brutal things get on the streets. We felt uncomfortable filming it, so we asked Angelo and his parents whether or not to include that scene in the film. For him, it felt normal.

That explains why he says, “I love this neighbourhood, but not the people.”

Nardelli: If you’re not a full-blooded macho man, then you’re an outcast there.

La Rosa: Angelo simply isn’t like that; he has a gentle way of connecting with people, very different from the other kids. When we met him at the age of nine, he was not yet fully aware of that. But over the three years we’ve spent there, everything changed, including his perception of himself and of the neighbourhood. At a certain point, hanging out with two girls became problematic. Gender models are still approached in a traditional way there.

The girls tend to be dominant, while Angelo is more thoughtful.

Nardelli: Mary is rather bossy, Rosy is wild, and Angelo is more reflective. This created an interesting dynamic. But as soon as another kid entered the group, that balance fell apart. 

La Rosa: Initially, it didn’t matter much that he hung out with girls; he was still a child. Then, little by little, it became trickier until, at one point, we were afraid to jeopardise his social life in the neighbourhood! But he said, “No, I want to do this!” The obstacles were a mixture of social codes and jealousy. Other kids also wanted to be part of the film project, but as soon as they joined, they messed up everything. We constantly had to take those social dynamics into account.

How much did you guide those children? Why did they do all the things they did? 

Nardelli: We were there for 70 days to film, but we spent at least twice as much time there, doing other things. We set up a framework for them to improvise. Sometimes it worked, most of the time it didn’t. We had to wait for all the variables to fall into place, creating the perfect conditions for a cinematic moment. That happened rather organically than scripted.

La Rosa: We wanted to document something beyond their daily lives, and building up this new space with them in the kindergarten was a perfect occasion. They brought us there, and Rosy said, “What a mess; let’s clean it all up.” We thought: perfect!

Doing most of the ‘construction work’, she isn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty!

Nardelli: Rosy is wild. She got herself quite a reputation for being a free spirit. For the film, she felt free to take it all out, without being judged by others. 

La Rosa: This was her ultimate chance to prove herself as someone who could act responsibly and take care of things. 

Nardilli: Her parents and teachers were surprised. “We’ve never seen her like this. This is a side she never shows.” She was the most attached to the place. While workers had already begun demolishing the building, she kept tidying and cleaning. For me, that was one of the most emotional moments in our project.

Being proud of their work, they have a strong sense of ownership. This was really their place.

La Rosa: In this intense neighbourhood, it’s difficult to find private space, but they created one for themselves. When they wrote their names on the wall, we were like… Yes! That makes it clear what this place really means to them.

Although their conversations sound surprisingly poetic and philosophical, we hear their daily concerns shining through. Did you push them to have such talks?

Nardelli: They can’t be pushed! 

La Rosa: The scene in which they talk about their fathers in jail started as a simple game, but then the tone of the conversation changed unexpectedly. Such stories are simply a part of their lives. Each family there has at least one family member in jail.

They also say that growing up scares them.

Nardelli: Growing up means following in their parents’ footsteps. Mary’s parents were only 14 when her mum gave birth to her – in one year, she will be the same age as her parents when they got her. Starting your own family is the only way to escape from the family nest. In that sense, every kid there is afraid to grow up. Mary says: When we will be married, being together like friends won’t be possible anymore. 

La Rosa: As a grown-up, boundaries are stricter. You can’t hang around with male friends any longer. THE CASTLE tells about growing up in a context where social codes are strong, and your range of options is narrow; you don’t have many. That’s a sad aspect of their lives. There is a political side to the story. Such neighbourhoods are often talked about in terms of clichés that we tried to deconstruct. We approached these themes without projecting preconceived ideas. We let those kids take us somewhere, in their own way.

The moment I learned the most about Angelo was in the song he sings, about “how nothing will change and we can stay here forever”.

La Rosa: That song is sung in a strong Neapolitan dialect. This ‘Neomelodica Napoletana’ music is very popular in that neighbourhood, but we couldn’t understand the lyrics. We still don’t know exactly what the song is about, but the only words we could get – ‘Nothing will happen’ – did fit perfectly with that moment in the film.

Although you came as outsiders, they seemed to trust you completely.

La Rosa: We have earned that trust over time. Without patience, we would never have achieved this level of intimacy. We have constructed this story together with them over four years. For us, this was a lesson in finding different narratives, simply by letting people talk freely. We only created a framework for them.

Nardelli: We discovered our film while making it.

The demolition of the kindergarten is inevitable. Did you know all along that this was about to happen? 

Nardelli: We knew there was a plan, but in Sicily, plans can stay on hold for years. But then suddenly it happened, and we were not ready for it.

La Rosa: We were still about 10% short of the planned recordings, so we had to find creative solutions. But we knew from the beginning that the renovation works could be a nice ending point. 

But it’s not the end! Why does the film end the way it ends?

Nardelli: I love it when cinema creates something that wasn’t there before. When the realistic part of our story ends with the destruction of “our castle”, we created another magical space elsewhere, where we can return at any time in our imagination.

Have the kids seen the film? 

La Rosa: We showed a preliminary result to the children and their parents to obtain their approval. But the Italian premiere at the Biografilm Festival in Bologna was the first time they had travelled by plane, stayed in a hotel… It was a very complete experience.

Nardelli: That was stressful for us. I remember myself shouting at 4 o’clock: “Girls, please, go to sleep!“ But they had great fun!

We didn’t talk much about cinematography. Maybe because it all felt so natural. Was there a big cinematographic plan behind it?

Nardelli: A lot of scenes took an amazing start, but then faded out, because children easily get bored. In the editing, we synthesised them a bit.

La Rosa: The filming happened rather spontaneously, without thinking about the decoupage. We ended up with loads of footage and four months to edit it. 

Gert Hermans

“Our audience constantly renews itself”

The rapid rise of streaming platforms is having a huge impact on our sector. Not a single industry event goes by without specialist analysts comparing figures on the consequences for the production, distribution and consumption of (children’s) films. At Filem’On, we were able to get information straight from the source: jury member Emma Tirand represents Benshi, a major French streaming service aimed exclusively at children (and especially their parents). And now Benshi is looking to conquer Belgium with its excellent catalogue of children’s films.

Can you do an elevator pitch for Benshi? 

Emma Tirand: Benshi is a streaming platform for children aged 2 to 11 years old, focusing on interesting arthouse films that challenge their viewpoints. We follow an editorial line with the help of our editorial committee, which decides on every film that is presented on our platform. That editorial line is crucial for what we do. 

On the children’s market today, do we need more content or better content?

Tirand: Children are exposed to screens everywhere, all the time. Even parents who closely monitor what their children watch can do little to rectify this. We offer a safe space where children can watch age-appropriate films. We’re the only platform providing such specific age recommendations, which reassures parents. Compared to the never-ending catalogues on channels such as Netflix, Benshi offers relatively few titles. As a small platform, we don’t believe in a constant stream of content; we believe in well-chosen films that spark something in your child, especially since children tend to watch their favourite content over and over again. 

You talk from a parent’s point of view. What role do they play in Benshi’s policy? 

Tirand: We don’t believe in the cliché that what is made for children is by definition childish. We push for films that are interesting to watch as a family. We believe that creators who work for children need to be extra selective, because this is the time when your audience grows up, discovers things, and develops. Those stories need to be even better than others. Of course, we all know that there are times when parents put their children in front of the television to have a moment to themselves. Both ways of using Benshi are fine. Parents will make choices for their children in line with their own preferences. That’s why we advertise to parents, not to the children. When we talk about Benshi, we talk about the parents. 

Why is it important to be so super accurate in your age recommendations?

THE THREE ROBBERS

Tirand: A three-year-old does not have the same interests as a seven-year-old, or a ten-year-old. They don’t have the same knowledge or attention span. For younger audiences, we mainly offer (series of) short films; we rarely show feature films. Classics such as AZUR & ASMAR (Michel Ocelot) or THE THREE ROBBERS (Hayo Freitag) are suitable for those who want to enjoy feature films for the first time. Our age ratings take into account the themes, length, pace of films, etc. 

This narrative differs from the usual commercial considerations of streaming platforms, but is entirely consistent with that of most festivals in our sector.

Tirand: Benshi’s roots lie in cinemas, in the Studio des Ursulines, an arthouse cinema in Paris specialising in children’s films. We maintain strong ties with French cinemas and festivals. The importance of discovering films in the cinema does not conflict with our idea that children can also watch them online. These two patterns can coexist perfectly.

How do you keep that bond with the cinemas alive?

Tirand: Benshi consists of two elements: a streaming platform and an online cinema guide. Our editorial manager and her committee watch every title that is released in French cinemas. If a film gets a Benshi recommendation label, we’ll promote it on our website, we’ll post a review, we’ll have announcements in our newsletter, and we’ll look for partnerships with distributors. Since COVID, SVOD has grown tremendously, and streaming has become a part of people’s lives. But it doesn’t exclude the success of cinemas.

What is your personal role in the organisation chart? 

Tirand: I’m in charge of acquisitions; I buy films for the platform. Benshi is an editorialised platform, which means that each month, the editorial manager and I work hand in hand to propose themes, to which I adjust my acquisition activities. For instance, last October, we had an interesting selection around exile, for which I bought films like NO DOGS OR ITALIANS ALLOWED (Alain Ughetto), DOUNIA AND THE PRINCESS OF ALEPPO (Marya Zarif), and several shorts. These themes keep coming back, as our audience constantly renews itself – that’s one of the nice things about working for a platform for children. When you start watching Benshi at the age of three, two years later, your preferences will have completely changed, but other children will have come along to take your place. 

NO DOGS OR ITALIANS ALLOWED

How are things organised on the acquisition side?

Tirand: We mostly buy non-exclusive SVOD rights for French-speaking territories; Benshi has always been a French platform. But in October 2025, we launched a platform in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, with a new website and new films. We partnered with Cinekid in the Netherlands for the launch and with Filem’On in Belgium for a Benshi Award. And from December 2024, we have another platform in the UK. We will further strengthen our presence by offering Dutch and English dubs, and luckily, we offer many films without dialogue.

Emma Tirand

How would you position Benshi compared to other streaming platforms? 

Tirand: We’re not the main platform in a family. People come to us for specific, additional content that they’re not necessarily familiar with. They might stay with us for a while, but I don’t see ourselves as competitors with Disney or Netflix. We play in a different category. 

Would that audience be comparable to the average festival audience?

Tirand: Not necessarily. What Benshi and festivals have in common is the audience’s trust. Just as schools and families confidently go to a festival, hoping to be pleasantly surprised, parents trustfully come to us to discover something new. The intensity of this experience depends on how much parents are willing to invest in it. If you navigate our age ratings carefully, you can easily find films that you can watch with children of different ages, as a family experience. 

Has Benshi already become a brand among producers? As in, “I’ve made a typical Benshi film”?

Tirand: I know exactly what a Benshi film is. I’m not sure if producers want to brand their work as such, but they do know what we’re looking for. Unfortunately, we don’t financially involve ourselves in a project until it’s finished. We don’t do pre-sales… yet..

Do you have an idea about your audience profile?

Tirand: It’s very urban; mostly middle to upper-class families who take their children to cinemas anyway. We reach out to new potential audiences, including those who lack easy access to movie theaters, through social media and parent influencers that are aligned with us, but it’s not easy.

What percentage of your content is produced in France?

THE LITTLE MOLE

Tirand: 80%, I would say. That’s a lot. We also have content from Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and a lot from Eastern Europe, where the stop-motion tradition is strong. Which speaks from patrimonial content, like THE LITTLE MOLE (Zdeněk Miler), that we are happy to include in our catalogue.

Your website shows a list of Benshi’s “heroes”! Who’s on your list?

Tirand: The little bear POMPON (Matthieu Gaillard), the cute bird DIMITRI (Agnès Lecreux & Fabien Drouet), and my all-time favourite short on Benshi is ANATOLE’S LITTLE SAUCEPAN, a lovely stop-motion animation by Eric Montchaud.

ANATOLE’S LITTLE SAUCEPAN

Benshi even has a section for documentaries. If kids have the preconception that documentaries are boring, inaccessible films for adults, Benshi is there to prove the opposite with a very accessible catalogue. 

Tirand: Good documentaries for young audiences are hard to find. There are lots of nature documentaries made for television, but we prioritise the cinematic aspect and link it to fascinating themes. Like in THE ANCIENT WOODS (Mindaugas Survila), a Lithuanian film without dialogue, it’s a fantastic experience to be immersed in a forest like that. It’s these kinds of unique adventures that Benshi promotes, because they foster a love for cinema at a young age.

Among all the other streaming platforms, you make a nice, civilised impression: No advertisements, but affordable prices… 

Tirand: We are no sharks! In this highly competitive market, we have around 25,000 subscribers in France, and we continue to grow, partly with the support of CNC (French National Film Centre) as well as Creative Europe MEDIA for our European expansion. It is not easy to carve out a place for ourselves in the market, but we seize every opportunity to tap into new markets, and we remain true to who we are.

THE ANCIENT WOODS

Is being a jury member at a festival a suitable way for you to prospect for new content?

Tirand: Filem’On was my first time as a member of an ECFA Jury. It was great to discuss with other jury members, and I’m happy with the choice we ultimately made for GOAT GIRL by Ana Asensio. 

Gert Hermans

“You need to feed the forest”

In the short Norwegian documentary WITH GRACE, the 13-year-old title character, a witty girl with big dreams and an exceptional talent for making everyone laugh, introduces us to her loving farming family in Kenya. Spurred on by the devastating impact that nature has on their lives, Grace’s father experiments with a simple method to make their environment more livable. At the Filem’On festival, producer Arne Dahr came to tell us exactly how it works.

Significantly, the film begins with the image of a tree. 

Arne Dahr: Trees are so important for this film. This family is planting trees to let them grow into forests, which provide shade and humidity, even in the desert. You need to feed the forest until it is big enough to continue growing on its own. That is how an oasis will emerge.

In my garden, the plants all die, but in the desert, they can survive!

Dahr: The main idea of Kisilu, Grace’s father, is to build a farm where people, animals, and plants can grow into a new ecosystem. Desert ground can be cultivated, certainly in Kenya, where the soil is very fertile. The main problem is the lack of water. But if you plant seeds and water them for a while, the ecosystem evolves. Kisilu has gained the trust of his neighbours, who start following his example. 

Those people’s lives depend on whether there is water or not.

Dahr: So do our lives, but we don’t feel it yet. This film is about climate change, affecting the lives of people living in the midst of nature, with nature, and cultivating nature. If the rain doesn’t come, their entire life will change. They don’t have the buffer zones that we have. 

Grace’s father is the one promoting this new way to survive nature’s harsh reality.

Dahr: He is a visionary! Kisilu is a remarkable man who manages to gather his neighbours around him, form a community, and convince them of his mission. He manages to lead them positively, and people like his ideas and want to try them out together.

He is also the one who breaks the circle. All the other fathers leave for the city to make money, but he wants to stay with his family.

Dahr: Grace has eight siblings, and you see Kisilu around his kids all the time. Whether there is a flood or a drought, or even if the house collapses, there’s always a smile, and there’s always friendliness. You never see him lose his temper. He is very different from the clichés about strict or absent fathers. The question if he will have to move to the city greatly concerns Grace.

What would make him leave his family?

Dahr: The necessity to make money to feed his family and pay for schooling, which is very expensive in Kenya. There are no public schools that offer free education, but he insists that his children, both sons and daughters, receive an education. Kisilu didn’t leave; he is still with his family, and they manage to live off the farm. And there’s one more hero in this film. Despite her worries, Kisilu’s wife, Christina, is never stressed. She supports her husband and runs the family. In addition to climate change, this is also a film about hope and about good parenting. 

We see Grace looking at pictures of herself as a baby. Who took those pictures? How come you followed that family for so long?

Dahr: In 2017, director Julia Dahr made a film about Kisilu called THANK YOU FOR THE RAIN. That’s when she met little Grace and decided to come back later to make a film about her; we’re observing her father through her eyes. Julia is extremely devoted to this theme. She became friends with the family, and over the years, she returned many times. She has lived with them, and Kisilu came to Norway to visit her. The images you see of Grace as a little girl are footage that was shot over the years on all those trips.

You decided to use a voiceover.

Dahr: We had many discussions about that. It’s Grace’s voice that you hear, both in English and in her own language, and there’s a third version available in Norwegian.

You can hear her laughter after every sentence she says.

Dahr: That’s typical for Grace – it was real, and that’s why we didn’t cut it. Voicing the film was a complicated process. Grace had to travel to the capital, Nairobi, which is a two-day trip for her. She made it with Dina Mwende, our Kenyan co-director. But Grace is attending a boarding school, and they didn’t want to give her time off. We needed to talk to the principal, and many other people were involved. But we insisted on having her voice, and despite the complicated process, it worked out very well.

Grace recalls many fond memories. And there’s one particularly beautiful story about a yellow dress.

Dahr: I’m happy that you like the story. We had the BBC involved in the production; they were very much into all these details, and the yellow dress was one of them. They insisted that we see that dress, but the directors didn’t want it, and we didn’t have the image. So we had to come up with a creative solution. It’s a strong little story within the bigger film. 

She recounts how the dress made her feel like a princess, until a storm blew it away. 

Dahr: “And I never saw my yellow dress again.” Her mother lost all her underwear in that storm, and that makes everybody laugh, even though the house has collapsed.

What else should we pick up from life in that village?

Dahr: People live outside all the time. There isn’t even a door to mark where “inside” begins. You only go inside to sleep or have some shade. They eat together, but not like us, having three meals a day. The family eats when there is food; even if mum starts cooking in the middle of the night, everybody wakes up to eat. For Grace, this is a lovely memory. Audiences need to see how people are living and having a good time like that.

Is that a message you want to convey to your audience?

Dahr: The film is being shown on several TV channels, including the BBC, and has been screened at at least 90 festivals. Julia would like to go back once more and make a third film about Christina, to show life in Kenya from a woman’s perspective.

Is it correct that this film is a ‘project of love’ from an uncle for his niece?

Dahr: Julia is my niece, and I’m her godfather. When several employees in Julia’s company, Differ Media, became pregnant at the same time, I stepped in to finish two projects in production. I stayed for almost two years.

Gert Hermans

“Smoking is a quintessential part of depicting Dublin”

What makes a film typically Irish? Lots of chatter? Check! Coffee, beer, and cigarettes? Check! Grey streets of an industrial town in decline? Check! And a friendly director and producer saving their festival time to explain the background to their story in great detail? Double check!

Bobby dreams of becoming a detective, like his TV hero Kojak. When his big brother Oisin goes missing, Bobby and his friend Nell sink their teeth into the case, which sends them descending into a dark, criminal underworld. Their quest refers to incidents from the early 1980s, when parents raised their voices against local drug dealers who were destroying their families. Producer Laura McNicholas sums up the film’s arena: “A child from a working-class background, discovering himself against a backdrop of socioeconomic agitation. Ultimately, SPILT MILK is about a kid understanding the love he has for his family, acknowledging that the world is a bit darker than he expected.” 

Bobby is introduced through a brilliant sentence: ‘You always have a plan, and you always get in trouble.’ 

Director Brian Durnin: Sounds exactly like my life. Bobby’s got a huge imagination and a big heart; he sees the good in things, but he’s missing how much his best friend needs him to be there for her. Throughout the story, he understands that, regardless of all his plans, he needs to start becoming aware of the people who are being good to him.

What’s the importance of brothers? Are you the younger brother? 

Durnin: I’m the older one and felt a certain responsibility to guide my siblings in life, whether or not they sensed that. As an older brother, you’re seeing the younger ones making their mistakes. My sister was wild; she got in more trouble than I did. In SPILT MILK, Bobby looks up to his brother Oisin, but he doesn’t want to be like him. He’s very much his own person. 

He doesn’t want to be Oisin. He wants to be Kojak!

Durnin: ‘Kojak’ was big in the 70s, and it was all the time rerun in the 80s; ‘Kojak’ was always on TV. Even into the 90s, in Ireland, we had our national broadcaster, and maybe one or two English channels. Daytime TV featured many detective shows: ‘Murder, She Wrote’, ‘Ironside’, ‘Kojak’… Bobby genuinely admires that tough guy, who takes no crap. If there was going to be Kojak in the film, I wanted a scene that had a purpose, a thematic foreshadowing. I watched every episode of Kojak – there are over 100 episodes – and ended up finding a clip with a cool quote and a little wink. 

I suppose this cost you some money?

McNicholas: The more people were in the clip, the more we had to pay. So we picked a scene with just Kojak in it. But the football archive scenes were even harder to get. The price charged by the English FA for archive material was astronomical, and eighties football was not archived in Ireland. Luckily, our Scottish co-producers could acquire some material. Our editor, Colin Monie, is an amazing mega-brain. He always knew exactly where we were in the timeline of the movie and was obsessed with details. He only wanted to use games that were really played during that short period. I was like: ‘Who cares?’ But for him, it became massively important. 

Another substantial part of your budget must have gone to cigarettes!

Durnin: In the 80s in Ireland, literally everybody smoked. The adult actors couldn’t smoke in the room with the kids, even though the cigarettes were fake. It was a lot of work, figuring out who could smoke and when. But that’s a quintessential part of depicting Dublin in 1984. 

Which you have done very meticulously!

Durnin: A lot of the look is in the colour tones. I had some key references, like British photographer Tish Murtha’s social realist reportages about Northern England, and my own family photo albums. Everyone was wearing different shades of brown in those days; the world looked almost sepia. Several people told me: You transported me back to my own family in the 80s.

For that, you needed to find the right location. 

McNicholas: Dolphin House is Dublin’s largest remaining public housing flat complex, built in 1957. Many people have moved out, and many properties are empty. We took over a few units. In terms of production design, the O’Brien family flat was pretty much designed like a time capsule, straight to the ’80s.

Durnin: Those social protests actually did take place there, in Dolphin House.

Were those protest scenes based on historical facts?

Durnin: The same thing happened in several flat blocks. All of those communities were feeling abandoned; they weren’t getting enough support from the police or the state. People were dying there; they needed to make a statement.

You must have incorporated many childhood memories, not only in the narrative, but into the details. I suppose you once built towers out of beer mats.

Durnin: That’s based on me, spending time in pubs as a kid; my father was an alcoholic until he quit drinking. Until the age of 12, I was a pub kid, playing under the tables as my dad’s social life was centred around pubs and bookies, around drinking and horse racing. These things were acceptable back then. People used to drive to places, drink, and then drive home, in a car full of smoke, with six kids with no seatbelts on. It was such a different world. 

I bet you were doing a lot of jumping jacks in gym class.

Durnin: We had a gym teacher called Ollie. He was full of energy: ‘Here we go, high knees! High knees!’ A muscular man in his fifties, like Popeye. He could balance one of those Swedish benches on his chin and walk around the gymnasium. My school had this big, old gym hall where we climbed the ropes. That’s straight out of my life. I don’t think PE is like that anymore. 

Have you enjoyed yourself with clothes and props?

Durnin: Oh, yes! John is wearing one jumper that belonged to my wife’s father, and the other is my father’s. I was just bringing in whatever I could find. There’s a radio from my granny, the little side table in the apartment was the one that my father had beside him, with an ashtray on it; he would sit there and smoke 60 cigarettes per day in a chair that was molded around his body, watching horse racing and Kojak.

Is the rhythm of the dialogues something you had to work on, or was it all there?

McNicholas: That’s all natural; it’s banter. There’s a kind of playfulness in how Dubliners talk to each other, and there’s definitely a musical element to our accent. There’s some bad language in the film, but that’s how people communicate, particularly in the inner city. It’s conversational rather than aggressive. 

Durnin: We come from a generally dark, rainy country, so we’re reliant on our personalities to get the energy into life.

SPILT MILK seems to be an ode to motherhood. Behind Bobby’s mother’s weary facade, you can still see a twinkle of light.

Durnin: Dani (Danielle Galligan) is incredible. During COVID, we invited her for an online table read, and she was just brilliant! We were wondering if maybe she was too young, but when somebody nails a part that much, it’d be crazy not to give her the role. She was always intended to be a young mother, but we styled her a little older. Nobody questioned Laurence O’Fuarain as Bobby’s father, although they are both around the same age.

They look totally credible together. 

McNicholas: It was important that they felt like a couple. They look a bit worn out because they don’t take good care of themselves, but potentially, they’re a handsome mum and dad.

Durnin: I showed Laurence the reference photos of my father, and he showed me his, and they looked exactly the same, with the same moustache. Laurence usually looks rather buff, like a hunky guy. But he said, All I’m going to do is go to the pub every night and drink pints with my father – which he did. And no gym! I told them both beforehand: I’m not going to do make-up on you. This should authentically feel like the eighties, when people were worn out because they had no money to look after themselves. They hardly knew where the next meal was coming from. They were relying on their wits to keep them going.

Asking you about the title comes from a silly typo that I made, writing in my notes about a film called SPLIT MILK.

Durnin: We didn’t want something too literal; it’s more like a state of mind. Spilt Milk indicates something like, ok, that’s happened, now let’s move on. Bobby is not going back to being a little kid. He puts the hat down; he’s still playing games, but something has matured inside him. He loses some of his innocence, but not his imagination. He just has new information; he knows the world isn’t perfect.

McNicholas: Brian and I, being both parents of young boys, talked a lot about resilience. You want your kids to dream, but you equally want them to have resilience because they’re going to need it. That’s kind of sad, but it’s also a good part of growing up, being able to deal with things when they don’t go your way. Ultimately, this is a film about parents wanting their kids to have the freedom to dream, and unfortunately, lots of kids don’t get that freedom. 

SPILT MILK seems like a big labour of love.

Durnin: My connection to the story was obviously personal, based on my kind of upbringing. But I also felt privileged to tell a story about our city, about where we come from.

McNicholas: As Dubliners, we love Dublin. The film captures the essence of what it is to be a Dubliner, even in difficult times. All characteristics that we would associate with Dublin, the sense of humour, the banter, the resilience, I don’t think any of that has changed.

Gert Hermans

Brian Durnin & Laura McNicholas were guests of the Zlin Film Festival 

Brian Durin was guest of the Filem’On Festival

“Stop singing and tell me a story!”

The underwater world is full of colours—some say as many as 9 million!—movement, and strange creatures. The ideal environment for an animation artist to unleash her creativity, or is that just a little too ambitious? Especially when you consider that all these animals also sing and dance in a dazzling deep-sea musical! During the Filem’On Festival in Brussels, Czech director Bara Anna Stejskalova explained how she brought this superhuman plan to fruition.

The ocean is paradise for Fran, a gracious yet murderous mantis shrimp. Her deadly claws take whatever they desire. But when Fran falls in love with the blind and hideous fish, Milva, the ocean will never be the same again. 

Allow me to present you with a few dilemmas. LA LA LAND or THE SOUND OF MUSIC?

Bara Anna Stejskalova: LA LA LAND.

Why am I not surprised? SINGING IN THE RAIN or MOULIN ROUGE?

Stejskalova: MOULIN ROUGE. We have the theme of ‘forbidden love’ in common.

Are you a musical fan?

Stejskalova: Not at all. I grew up on Czech fairy tales. When Disney films finally came to the Czech video stores, I was surprised by how much singing there was going on. I was like, Stop singing and tell me a story! I suspect that my aversion to musicals originated there, and I never returned to the genre as an adult. But when writing the script for 9 MILLION COLOURS, it became clear that it had to be a musical. I spent two weeks on an island in the Azores, where I went diving with an instructor. I found out there were so many sounds in the sea, from the small pebbles to the big whales singing. That’s when I realised my movie needed music that referred to all those sounds underwater.

It’s very tempting now to quote the Disney song Under the Sea!

Stejskalova: We used that song when pitching at Animarkt in Poland. We wanted to pitch the project in a way that made everybody feel engaged, so my producer, my editor, and I did a karaoke version of Under the Sea, sung into glasses of water. It didn’t really work, but people remembered us, and we won the award. In the original concept for 9 MILLION COLOURS, we considered vocalists singing underwater. We conducted some tests, but the problem was that the microphones mainly picked up the bubbles, while the vocal sound disappeared into a big, bubbly mess. But we used this principle in the sound design, for example, when you hear the characters laughing underwater. Our sound designer took a bullet for the team and went down with his head.

The songs also have an explanatory function.

Stejskalova: In an early phase of the project, I wondered how to explain that the mantis shrimp can see so many colours. I wanted the audience to recognise this as a fact, and not as some random choice made by a whimsical animator. Working on the music design, we considered having her sing about her amazing powers, how she’s a queen, and how many colours she can see! That’s when we decided it had to be a musical. 

Are you good at singing?

Stejskalova: Me? I suck! Singing at Animarkt was a sacrifice I was willing to make to get my film made. There were only 30 people in the room, most of whom were animation people, who are a bit weird and quirky by nature, so I felt among equals.

There are two things that animators usually tell me they hate: water and animals with many legs.

Stejskalova: My animators do hate me now! Before 9 MILLION COLOURS, I made the film LOVE IS JUST A DEATH AWAY, in which the main hero was a worm; no legs, no arms, just a body and a mouth. I felt like tuning things up a bit, and we ended up with this underwater overkill. Luckily, Jiří Krupička and Vojtěch Kiss are brilliant animators. We scheduled the film based on my experience with puppets having two, four, or no legs, not taking into account the number of legs of crabs or shrimps. The entire production took about one year longer than estimated, primarily due to the legs, water, and lighting requirements.

Fran is visually a complex character; Milva is rather the opposite, like the simplest form you can imagine. Did both options come with different challenges? 

Stejskalova: Animating a character that doesn’t have many features is hard. Milva’s body movements are limited due to her monolithic shape. She hardly has eyes; she can just express some simple emotions through the shape of her mouth. We had three shapes: smiling, frowning, and looking surprised. I wanted her to initially appear in a haze of mystery, so that her character could develop. From a simple, emotionless being, she becomes a more complex individual, making her journey throughout the film. 

Even her colour changes. I think I saw her blush. 

Stejskalova: That was prompted by your empathy, because that never happened. She probably got dirty because she is made of white silicone, which is almost impossible to keep spotlessly clean throughout filming. The audience doesn’t notice it, but I can even see the tiniest bit of hair or dust that sticks to her for a few frames and then vanishes.

Is it clay that you work with?

Stejskalova: Fran and Milva are made of silicone, the dolphins and shrimps are in rubber, and the crabs are printed in 3D; there were at least 40 of them. Rubber is cheaper than silicone, so we ended up using a lot of it. 

Where does Milva’s rudimentary form come from?

Stejskalova: She is based on two different, ugly, deepwater species. One of them is the blobfish, a notorious ugly duckling, but I like the texture of its skin, which we then applied to a different type of fish that basically has Milva’s shape. We gave the eyeless creature a little tale and added the front fins.

Fran has a striking, radiant effect in her eyes.

Stejskalova: Mantis shrimps are amazing animals. One of the coolest facts about them is that they have supervision. Humans have photoreceptors for three colours: red, green, and blue. Mantis shrimps have 16 photoreceptors; they can see ultraviolet, ultrared, and coralised light in a spectrum that we can’t even imagine. Crabs can only see in black and white, but not the same way as we perceive it. I found it fun to mimic and recreate those visions, even though I would always fail, because this goes beyond our perception. The entire character design is based on realistic elements, and all these species truly exist.

With the mantis shrimp as a natural superstar!

Stejskalova: I wanted to make a film with a mantis shrimp ever since I first read about them. They have the coolest features; they are ultra-strong and very territorial. Some subspecies have boxers instead of claws, but boxers don’t look good on film. We combined several subspecies, like the peacock mantis shrimp, which has all the wonderful colours. They are super fast; a punch from their boxing gloves is like a bullet from a gun, so fast that it creates little vacuum bubbles. Mantis shrimps are small, but even octopuses and dolphins are scared of them.

There’s an endless variety of coral, sea pox, algae, and everything… You could have gone on endlessly adding more details. How did you decide what was enough?

Stejskalova: We had the budget deciding that! Many objects were constructed in 360 degrees, so we rotated, reused, or repainted them. We kept some of the puppets for a possible exhibition. We have plenty of coral reefs; I don’t know what to do with them. There’s one thing that we couldn’t give enough visibility throughout the movie: I wanted more pieces of garbage in the image…

I noticed one can on the bottom of the ocean, and I wanted to ask you about it.

Stejskalova: There was so much more, but we made it too much part of the set. Showing how polluted the oceans are was an underlying message I wanted to convey. This sad reality needed to be addressed, without resorting to overly explicit references; if you try too hard to force a message, it often misses its target. I wanted it to be like a question that the audience would ask itself, a slightly uncomfortable feeling that you notice within yourself about why all that trash is there. 

There’s a lot of movement in the characters, but what about the motion in the backgrounds?

Stejskalova: The backgrounds are static, but with a bit of motion added. We shot mostly on green screen, and the backgrounds and water level are usually real-life footage that we composited in blue. We used 3D water only for the shrimp’s POV, because, in general, generated water looks kind of misplaced. Another type of movement was added in post-production via minuscule, shifting dots of plankton.

The light, constantly playing in the water and on the sea bottom, adds another layer of movement.

Stejskalova: Together with our cinematographers, we found a satisfying method for that: a projector beaming sun rays on the sea bottom, frame by frame. In the test projections, even though we had a green screen behind the characters, we recoloured the green into blue, which is enough to convince you that you are underwater. There wasn’t much post-production needed. We just added the rays and erased all the rigs. However, the creation of water was a straightforward process. 

Did you watch many synchronised swimming videos? 

Stejskalova: Maybe the animators did. Developing the choreographies was fun. The crabs were extra challenging, due to those six legs. They don’t really have a body that you can rock, so we had to rock them by their legs.

At the end, we jump out of the water with the characters and finally see the open sky again. It’s a wonderful sky that perfectly blends with the underwater universe.

Stejskalova: I tend to start and end with similar shots, like closing the circle. The film opens in the early morning hours, under a clear blue sky. Then we dive in, going deeper and deeper, until we emerge again, as if the viewer has been on a journey alongside the main characters. These two shots mirror each other, but are set at different times of the day. 

What is it about Milva that attracts Fran so much?

Stejskalova: Compared to the other creatures, who look like little monsters, Milva is this white, glowing creature. She’s not monstrous. And because she is not afraid, she lets herself be manipulated. Fran can manoeuvre this life-size doll into any position she wants.

I thought it was about even the deadliest creature being able to recognise and admire innocence, but you make it sound less nice. 

Stejskalova: Fran isn’t a nice character! It’s all about manipulation. I would say she’s a bit of a narcissist. Milva is a bit silly and naive, but she’s pure. Milva is like a depressed human being, unable to see the joy in the world. While Fran can be sanguine, she’s happy, highly esteemed, like a boss, a queen bee. 

Which of these two extremes suits you best? Or do you consider yourself just a dancing crab in the background?

Stejskalova: Probably, every animator is a bit of a sociopath. Who else would lock themselves away in a cellar, in the dark, for so long?

Luckily, they are locked in cellars! Imagine all those crazy animators being out on the streets!

Stejskalova: That’s why we have festivals, so you can locate exactly where they are. 

Do you still eat seafood? 

Stejskalova: Oh yes! I don’t feel guilty about it. Do you know those rituals where you have to eat your enemy to make you understand them? Actually, they are not my enemies; I simply like seafood! 

Gert Hermans

On behalf of Filem’On

“The underlying forces that are already emerging”

However small she may be, Elena is at a turning point in her life. Her first communion is supposed to be her introduction to spiritual life, but an encounter with Serezade brings her into contact with a more worldly existence. Her friendship with the traveller girl, who dances in the streets and plays with her goat, triggers new insights in the introverted Elena, who has just been introduced to the transience of life for the first time. 

Director Ana Asensio, who had a rich career as an actress, combines in GOAT GIRL the severity of Spanish traditions in Madrid in 1988 with the foreshadowing of a more exuberant future for Elena, an obedient girl with big, friendly eyes. At the Filem’On Festival, GOAT GIRL was awarded an ECFA Award by the jury.

Seeing the opening scene, something tells me that as a child, you were familiar with the nervous wait before going on stage. 

Ana Asensio: As a five-year-old, my mom signed me up for ballet. I have a vague memory of a big performance we did in a theatre that was larger than anything I could imagine. The scene returns to that moment of suddenly feeling exposed to a different kind of gaze. People weren’t looking at you as just another little kid, but as someone who is put up on a stage, under a spotlight, doing something that requires the adult’s attention. 

Poor Elena can only say that she “just wanted to do well.” 

Asensio: Elena’s grandmother replies wisely: “Why do you think doing the same as all the others is the way to go?” As a child, you don’t necessarily want to shine; you don’t want to stand out. Your parents might want you to, but you just want to be like every other kid. That scene tells us, on one hand, about the kind of girl Elena is, but also about her grandmother’s wisdom.

That speaks from the scene in which Grandma makes Elena dance. Rather than trying to make her fit into a structure, she wants to bring out the strength that is inside the girl.

Asensio: As she grows older, looking back on her life, Grandma tells her not to waste time trying to fit in, but to embrace her own path. Pulling that from Elena, she is the only one who sees the girl’s full potential.

Although she only appears in a few scenes, Grandma leaves a strong impression.

Asensio: Gloria Muñoz is a great actress; in her two scenes, she just gave it all. She helped so much in bringing the young protagonist, Alessandra González (playing Elena), physically close to her. Kids might not be so inclined to hug elderly strangers, but Gloria showed Alessandra that she was someone you could trust, hug, and feel safe with.

There’s something in Elena’s eyes, a combination of heartbreaking innocence and straightforward power, that is really exceptional.

Asensio: That is what made me fall in love with Alessandra the first time I saw her on tape. We asked all candidates to improvise around a few questions and clues we gave them. She was the only one who would not answer right away; she took a minute to process the question, trying to understand exactly what we wanted from her, and then gave us an eloquent answer. Not to impress us, but just because she is like that. She has a great intuition. Let us hope she never takes acting lessons! Keep your intuition intact and remain curious about the world; that’s the best acting class you can get.

As innocent as they are, there is a strong and explicit femininity in the two girls, and you’re not afraid to show it.

Asensio: It was a battle! I wanted to show how innocent these girls are at this age, not even aware of their sexuality, but I had to make sure not to overexpose them. In a scene with Serezade, the Roma girl, dancing, with her skirt floating in the air, there is a moment when we catch a glimpse of her underwear. In the editing, the producers advised me to cut the scene earlier. Of course, their fear was valid, but somehow, it’s exactly that freedom that children have and that I wanted to show.

Like in the remarkable scene in which both girls see their reflections in the mirror splinters on the floor.

Asensio: Call it femininity, call it sexuality, call it self-discovery,… They are completely unaware of the underlying forces that are already emerging, which is beautiful. 

A text that Elena reads aloud to her grandmother adds an extra layer of meaning. 

Asensio: This poem by Spanish poet León Felipe questions all things we know, which are all invented by mankind. Stories were created and then written down. But basically, all the doctrines are only there to narrow our minds and our thinking. Felipe concludes I learned all of these stories, I fell asleep with them, but most of them sprouted from the fear of mankind.

The same can be said about religion. 

Asensio: All life’s bigger questions create anguish because we can’t answer them. All we have is faith, which often emerges from fear; a fear of realising that this is all there is, and basically, you’re alone in this world. Religion is there to guide you, and, perhaps, make you break with individualism and find some sort of comfort in belonging to a group, of which all members share the same beliefs. 

How does that character of the priest fit in? Does he represent the traditional religious authority? Something tells me that he’s not sure about his own beliefs. 

Asensio: He is inspired by a priest from my childhood. I remember his voice sounded like he had just been smoking. Why would a man who is married to God dye his hair? Where does this vanity come from? He must have some secret life behind closed doors. I told the actor Enrique Villén: You love rock and roll; straight from the church, you go home, you take off your cassock, and you blast some rock and roll on your stereo, you dance, and you play your electric guitar, and nobody knows about it. That’s your passion. Being a priest is your job, like a school teacher, and you want to make sure these kids pass the test. That’s your goal. 

Did you need to grow up in the Spanish tradition to tell this story?

Asensio: Elena’s feelings are universal, but the specificities are Spanish, indeed. The 80s in Spain were a period of transition, like an awakening in society that wanted to break with the censorship of its recent dictatorial past. There was something in the air; you could feel this freedom with artists and musicians, and with the people on the streets.  

News reports about a kidnapping help us to situate the era of the 1980s correctly; at the schoolyard, kids are playing ‘police versus terrorists’.

Asensio: The media coverage of a businessman being kidnapped by a terrorist group in my childhood affected the entire Spanish nation. We understood how the ransom was related to freedom and independence. I grew up next to a neighbourhood where many families lived from the military, and there was a threat of bombs regularly. I vividly remember as a kid walking by a car, thinking, Oh my god, I hope it doesn’t explode. 

The moment Elena runs away from home, she gains a different view of the world. Her gaze on small things changes, like a bucket of water or the sand under her feet.

Asensio: The way we see and perceive Elena’s world is exactly how she feels it. When she feels distant from her parents, the camera reflects that through their cut-off silhouettes, out of focus or distorted. When running away, she’s discovering the world by herself. Feeling a spiritual connection with her grandma, she remembers the poem, like a legacy that is being passed on to her. At that moment, we change the film’s aspect ratio to make it feel like everything expands in cinema scope! 

This seems to be the year of the goat… I’ve been asking directors remarkably often about goats. Now it’s your turn. Goats seem to have problems with authority.

Asensio: While writing the script, I imagined all those things that goats would do. But our goat did none of them! They are rebellious, but that’s what makes me sympathize with them. My star sign is Aries, the ram; we just go our own way, even if it’s completely irrational. I deliberately used the word ‘rebellious’; if I were to describe myself as ‘stubborn’, too many people would be taking credit. “Ana finally admitted she’s stubborn!” I’m a very passionate person, also as a filmmaker, which comes with a certain intensity.

Why did you need a voiceover? 

Asensio: It was at the very end of the editing process that I felt like there was something that I wanted to hit, and I didn’t know how. There was an insecurity about being able to get my personal, intimate story across. I tried an improvised voiceover at home, and up till today, I’m not fully sure if that was the right choice. At that moment, it gave me some peace and security that I did everything within my power to reach deeper and make the film as personal as possible. That’s why it’s my own voice that you hear.

That’s not so surprising, given your career as an actress.

Asensio: Acting was my first love, and I pursued it my whole life. Until I realised that this was no longer sufficient to express myself and feel fulfilled. Eight years ago, I wrote and directed my first feature film, and now I’ve made the second one. As an actress, you depend on what comes your way; if you are not among the lucky ones who are offered truly exciting roles, you end up being frustrated. I love acting in projects that I feel like belonging to. If those projects come my way, I’ll fully embrace and enjoy them; if they don’t come, that’s just fine, too. 

Gert Hermans

On behalf of the Filem’On Festival

“Thousands of trees stand between them”

As a Brussels festival, it is quite special to present AUTOKAR, an animated chronicle about Polish labour migration to Brussels in the 1990s. A little girl boards a Polish bus with Belgium as its final destination. The bus seems so big, the child is so small, and the journey is so long. When she loses her precious pencil, her search through the bus brings her face to face with her remarkable fellow passengers. In this way, the director gives shape to a childhood memory, with Brussels as its final destination. After the film’s successful premiere at the Berlinale, Sylwia Szkiladz came to explain the story at a festival in the city that has since become her home.

Times have changed; what happens in your film is completely unthinkable nowadays: a child has to travel thousands of kilometres on her own, on a bus from Poland to Brussels. But it is your story, and that of many children like you.

Sylwia Szkiladz: I arrived in Belgium in the 90s, when Poland was not yet a member of the European Union. People came here without a plan, without papers, not knowing what kind of work they might find, which was both exciting and frightening at the same time. Part of my family lived in Poland, another part lived in Belgium; as a child, I constantly travelled back and forth. Such independence was not unusual among Polish children of my age. With my Polish classmates in Brussels, we didn’t even talk about it; it felt normal to us. Only when I grew older did I realise how unusual that situation was. It’s an experience that I share with many kids of my generation. 

If you wanted to take a “piece of home” with you, that happened through the food that you brought.

Szkiladz: My parents came from a rural region near Belarus, where people provided for their own livelihood. Moving to a new country without money or a home, the family wanted to ensure that there would at least be something to eat. I remember the bags and suitcases, bursting with food, and hard to carry; often, the handle broke off. The family sent us all that food not only because they thought we were starving in Belgium, but also so that we would think of them whenever we ate it. Through the food, they tried to be with us.

We, Belgians, thought you were coming here because this was the promised land. From the film, I understood this wasn’t the case. The promised land is where the heart is, and the only reason for coming here was money. 

Szkiladz: It is hard to understand the exact reasons behind such a bold decision; they were young and completely unaware of what life in the Western world was like. Money was certainly one factor. In Poland, people presumed that all Belgians lived well, and that we, as hard-working people, could aspire to the same. It was also partly out of curiosity. My parents were in their early twenties. For them, it was a way to discover a world they had never known.

There must have been a tremendous sense of nostalgia in this community.

Szkiladz: Nostalgia isn’t always a healthy driving force; at times, it kept me from moving forward. I felt as though I wasn’t fully living in the present. As an adult, I wanted to move on in life, while preserving what mattered from those experiences. That’s one of the things that pushed me to make this film.

What do all the people in the bus have in common?

Szkiladz: Only when seeing the finished film, I realised that all characters had lost something, – a family, a home, a language, a pencil,… – and each of them deals with it in its own way. 

And they are all animals!

Szkiladz: We are watching through the eyes of an eight-year-old girl, coming from a village, surrounded by forest. She has heard all the stories people tell about forest animals and takes them literally. Her head is full of them. When she is afraid or overwhelmed by the trip, she digs into her imagination, and naturally, all those half-human characters appear. In this way, Agata brings something from her world onto the bus. These anthropomorphisms helped me tell a story that is close to my own. I needed some distance; I didn’t want to portray the people I actually encountered during my many crossings. Drawing humans with expressive features can easily become overly caricatural. The anthropomorphic bodies helped me exaggerate the characters freely, using the world of fairy tales. I was able to draw quite naturally from the codes of the coming‐of‐age tales and the fantastical.

My house is following me, she says!

Szkiladz: She left her home behind, but the house is still there, and thousands of trees stand between them. That house in itself is like a story with no ending.

Agata’s face looks minimalistic, no more than a few stripes. How did you make her so expressive when you had so few elements to work with?

Szkiladz: Through the combination of explicit body language and naturalistic voices. Before we started working on the animation, we recorded the voices in Warsaw with Polish actors. We couldn’t predict how Belgian animators would correctly shape an inner world through a language they didn’t understand. Take, for example, the “bear” on the bus. The animator initially portrayed him as far too rude, almost violent. Yet we needed to feel his human warmth, his underlying concern. Throughout the animation process, we prioritised emotion over technical perfection. It made us feel connected to the characters in a raw, imperfect, perhaps more truthful way. 

Another interesting character is the she-wolf, who leaves the bus, wanders into the forest, and is later picked up again. What exactly is going on there? 

Szkiladz: That’s a typical question from the Western world. In Poland, everyone immediately understands what is happening in that border scene. We can assume she doesn’t have the proper papers, so she crosses the border on foot through the forest and is picked up again on the other side. We also understand that she isn’t a bad person. She introduces Agata to artistic creation, giving her the pencil and drawing with her. She is the only character who doesn’t speak; we can imagine she comes from even farther beyond Poland. What matters is how our perception changes throughout the story, even though she is initially presented as potentially unpleasant.

We also get to see how border controls were organised, with bribery and greedy border patrols.

Szkiladz: People sometimes tell me how the film gave them goose bumps, because it shows exactly how things were. Only a few years later, Poland joined the EU. Everything happened very quickly for us, and there was never enough time to emotionally process all these changes. These stories are rarely talked about; there is still a certain shame in speaking about them. People prefer to forget. It felt good to take the time to work on this sequence, but it was difficult for me to construct. I expected it to be easier.

You created a beautiful visual contrast between the sharply outlined characters and the more vague backgrounds.

Szkiladz: This contrast between bright, fluorescent colours and black and white reflects the way I remember Poland at that time. AUTOKAR was drawn digitally in TVPaint with Cintiq, a programme for hand‑drawn 2D animation. Together with the artist Noémie Marsily, we designed the backgrounds using Chinese ink on paper, sometimes very sharp, sometimes a bit watery, but always with a focus on textures. We scanned and painted them in TVPaint, using the same brush as for the characters, which creates a connection between both layers.

How would you summarise your artistic journey to date?

Szkiladz: I was born in Poland, in Sokolka, near the Belarusian border; this region continues to inspire me. I grew up in Brussels, I arrived here when I was eight, and studied Visual Arts at Saint‑Luc and Animation at La Cambre, where we were encouraged to submit our films to festivals. That was very enlightening: meeting people and observing how the industry works felt like an important part of my formation. In 2015, I did a young artist residency at Studio Folimage, where I made THE TEENY-WEENY FOX with Aline Quertain (also screened at Filem’On). For more than 12 years, I have been running animation workshops under the name “Les Films du Lapin Masqué” with a wide range of participants: children, teenagers, seniors, animation students, in festivals, homework schools, kindergartens, retirement homes, migrant centres, in Poland, Belgium, Morocco, France. This diversity of encounters has inspired me enormously. Those people have taught me how to tell stories quickly and collectively, with few resources. What matters most is the energy. I tried to bring that joy of creation into AUTOKAR, resisting the temptation to be too perfectionist. 

At Cinekid, AUTOKAR won the Best International Short Film Award!

Szkiladz: All this was so unexpected! Because the setting of the film is so deeply Polish, I wasn’t sure whether it would work internationally. After the Berlinale, we received a flood of festival invitations, and the film already won several awards. In the meantime, I am working on my next project, but I can’t say much about it yet. The only thing I can reveal is that it will be an animated feature co‑produced by Lithuania, France, and Belgium. The project is still in its early stages, but is off to a very promising start. 

Gert Hermans

“Wait! It’s coming!”

People and animals arranged in geometric constellations, prompting conversations that never take place and quasi-serious observations of comical situations. If we can consider Estonians to be people with a penchant for dry humour, then BAA–BAA by young director Teresa Juksaar is the ultimate and downright hilarious tribute to the Estonian national character. Young director Teresa Juksaar came to visit the Filem’On festival to explain this remarkable observation.

A family that has just moved into their new flat in the city finds a goat at their door, an unexpected gift as part of a charity drive. This is the beginning of an odyssey of man and goat, travelling together through the city. In this strictly regulated environment, every animal seems an anachronism. Only the daughter of the house thinks differently…

We wonder how dogs actually see the world; they see things differently than we do. Similarly, I wonder how you see the world because we’re looking at the same things, but what you depict in your film looks completely different from what I see. 

Teresa Juksaar: My grandmother was an abstract painter; her works were highly expressive. I like to think of my films as abstract with eccentric elements. I consider myself quite a melancholic person who needs colours and humour to survive life’s challenges. 

Trying to describe your film, I’d say that everything is normal, yet nothing is truly normal. Every conversation feels a bit awkward, with people standing in geometric constellations or just staring at each other.

Juksaar: I’m inspired by what I experience in life, so in some way, I’m depicting reality. This is how I experience my world. I love people and the weird and silly things they do in their everyday lives. There’s a lot of cruelty in this world, but I focus on the good and prefer to approach serious topics with a healthy sense of humour.

Even the dogs and cats in your film are behaving weirdly. And there were a lot of them! You had cats, goats, Rottweilers and bloodhounds on set.

Juksaar: I’d say that having animals interact with each other in an urban environment is rather strange, even though they’re just behaving as they normally would. The two Rottweilers were the hardest part of the animal directing. They wanted to go after the goat. We had to use a sort of cloth so the dogs couldn’t see the goats; otherwise, they would have lost control. We used green screen in that shot; it wasn’t possible to have all of them together in the same frame.

Which leads us to the true hero of the movie… The goat!

Juksaar: We cast two male goats, one year before the shoot. But when we returned to the farm one week before the start, they had simply grown too big. So the goats had to be recast. That’s when we found two female goats, Kuusi and Kola. We needed two because goats are herd animals, and we used whoever was more cooperative at that moment. They both looked very different, although nobody but me seemed to notice. 

Were your goats disciplined? 

Juksaar: With so many challenging elements, like the weather, children, a lot of extras, and several demanding locations, the goats for sure weren’t the hardest part. They behaved quite well; they pooped a lot though.

On command? 

Juksaar: No, that scene happened spontaneously; it wasn’t in the script. When I said ‘cut’, the DoP shouted: “Wait! It’s coming!” Then I saw what he meant.

The film shows a healthy interest in animal poo, regardless of all the ‘no shitting’ signboards, wherever you look.

Juksaar: I created an atmosphere of a place where nothing is allowed; signboards are everywhere. In a city deprived of green spaces, the goat is bringing a sense of ‘nature’, until you bump into all these restrictions, including a ban on dog and goat shit.

The entire city, with its urban architecture, breathes a strong sense of alienation. 

Juksaar: Jacques Tati was an inspiration, with all these grey, concrete buildings, and a total lack of greenery. I found a small district in Tallinn that reminded me of Tati’s PLAYTIME. It’s in the city center, but nobody seems to know it. So many Estonians asked me: Where did you find that place? The film evolves from grey to much greener in the end. 

Of all the intriguing minor characters that cross our path throughout the film, did you have one particular favourite? 

Juksaar: There are many. The bus driver is one of the most memorable characters. And I admired the group of Japanese tourists. It was fun to work with them; they knew exactly what to do. We made a bit of fun of Japanese tourist stereotypes – I hope they don’t mind.

Can you guess my favourite? The lady of the animal shelter! She asks for the zodiac sign of a goat, she has a pink computer, and she knows how to use the delete button!

Juksaar: She is a colourful character. She loves animals, but doesn’t really like humans; making contact with animals is much easier for her.

Did you buy a pink computer? 

Juksaar: We painted it. It also had a pink mouse with ears, which, unfortunately, isn’t visible in the frame.

The only person acting relatively normally is a little girl. Is she the only reasonable human being?

Juksaar: I wanted her to be loud, bluntly expressing her feelings, because all the other characters are quiet and stoic. They don’t express their feelings that much.

You mean the others are simply standard Estonians.

Juksaar: Yeah, right. We don’t say a word if it ain’t needed. 

Among all these silent people, great importance is given to the sound reel. How did sound contribute to the film’s alienating atmosphere? 

Juksaar: Creating the sound design was a hard task, because the film genre is undefined; it’s not classical drama, nor pure comedy… It’s a bit of both. Searching for the right auditory elements, we included many goat sounds. Listening back to the film, I probably noticed a few “baa’s” too many. We experimented with the sound designer for quite a while before we found the right tone for the film.

Would you recommend every family take in a goat?

Juksaar: If you don’t resist a goat to bring change into your life, it might lead you into new and surprising situations, and get you closer to nature. The world could become a better place if we all started giving goats as presents on different occasions, opening ourselves up to life’s changes, and learning to adapt to them. Personally, I’d like to give it a try. Life shouldn’t be taken too seriously, and I’m pretty sure goats would gladly contribute to that. 

Gert Hermans

“Being with sisters was the essence of growing up”

Claustrophobia in the open air, is that a contradiction? Not in the short film PEOPLE UNDER WATER, by German director Paul Galli, who was a guest at the Filem’On Festival.

Two sisters get stuck on a wooden platform in a lake with a confident classmate. The location leaves them no room to escape. Long-suppressed conversations must finally be had, making them realise how far apart they have grown. It all starts with a time capsule that the youngest sister, Lila, has put together for a school assignment.

What would be in your time capsule?

Paul Galli: Those time capsules are not really a thing in German schools; I’ve only seen them in the movies. I would put in a gift from my sister. She had this little golden figurine of a pig. As a child, she never let me have it. When I went to South Korea for one year as an au pair, she gave it to me when I left. That was so generous!

What’s so special about sisters? 

Galli: I have two sisters; we’re a triplet. Being with sisters, for me, was the essence of growing up. We argued a lot as children, and we still have our quarrels now and then, but looking back on our relationship and how it has evolved, it’s so special to have had their presence throughout my entire life. My film is dedicated to them.

As the one brother in this three-person constellation, did you feel like the outsider?

Galli: I never did. It was never about sisters intentionally plotting against their brother. In fact, the sisterly bond in the film grew out of the relationship between actresses Joana and Sophia Taskiran. I worked with Joana before, and when she told me she had a younger sister who was also interested in acting, we wrote the script for them together.

With so many themes tackled, like sisterly love, depression, gender issues… what would be for you the overarching theme that is keeping all elements together?

Galli: The importance of talking to each other and not burying issues deep inside yourself.

Is that why the film is called PEOPLE UNDER WATER, while all meaningful conversations take place above water?

Galli: They never discuss what truly matters; everything stays bottled up and closed off until it all surfaces during the course of the film.

Which explains the intense silences in your film. I recognised different types: the silence of a lazy summer’s day, silence caused by alienation, by feeling embarrassed, or afraid, or angry. And a silence because you ran out of words to say to each other. 

Galli: Together with the scriptwriter, we combined all those types of silence. In the editing, we wanted to let the silence tell its own story, but perhaps I went a bit too far, especially for young people, who might not have the longest attention span. Honestly, I’m not sure if I made the film for young audiences in the first place.

Your story concentrates a lot of intensity in a very small space. How was it, being crammed onto that small platform?

Galli: What we in Germany would call a Kammerspiel, a chamber play. The platform wasn’t probably any bigger than three meters by three, surrounded by the vast water. When they were not in the shot, cast and crew were often swimming. We had paddle boards to go ashore, and two small, unstable boats for the crew to work from. They were connected to the platform, and we had to move them around to keep them out of the picture. Working with a small crew makes things more condensed; after every shot, we took no more than five minutes to prepare the next one. It helped that I had already worked with Joana Taskiran; she knew I was to be trusted, and the sisters were comfortable with one another.

That was no unnecessary luxury. On the platform were three girls, wearing little more than bathing suits.

Galli: We talked a lot with the actresses about comfort and safety, especially with Sophia. Having her sister with her was a great help. A big part of the team was women; a camerawoman might see and capture those scenes differently from a cameraman. 

In such a confined space, every movement becomes meaningful. Because you have so little room to manoeuvre, the few elements you do have take on great importance.

Galli: I give a lot of importance to preparation. I want most technical and cinematographic decisions to be made in advance so I can focus solely on the actors. With my core team – I like working with the same people – we lock the entire script before shooting begins, so that there are no more ambiguities. Every step is carefully planned and rehearsed in advance, not to restrict the actresses, but to create a stable framework they can rely on. This preparation allows them to let go on set, knowing the structure works, and to respond freely and intuitively in the moment.

Why this strong need to keep control? 

Galli: Our tight schedule was very much dependent on the weather. Actually, the film was supposed to be shot the previous summer. Then it started raining, and it never stopped, so we shot a completely different movie indoors. We met again this summer, with a year’s delay, and shot PEOPLE UNDER WATER. I’m happy we could finally make it!

The lighting is fantastic. You can feel the languor of a summer’s day, with lazy people lying underneath the sun. 

Galli: We only used natural light. That was partly a financial choice, but the sun also brings a different quality of light, which was perfect for the movie’s atmosphere. After last year’s experience, the weather made me extremely wary. We only had five days, and at the slightest disruption, we would have to call off the plan again. Every cloud in the sky made my tension rise. 

Gert Hermans

“Motherboards and wires were always a part of my life”

Love and being in love are physical sensations, but are they so physical that they change the shape and essence of your body? They are, in the world as depicted by Hungarian director Mirjana Balogh in her short film. It doesn’t get much more explicit than in WISH YOU WERE EAR.

In a world where ex-partners have to swap a chosen body part after a break-up, every relationship that ends leaves a visible mark: individuals not only lose a piece of themselves; they also carry a physical fragment of their past love along with them. Even in a harsh digital world, a break-up still hurts as much as ever. After winning the Crystal Bear Award for the Best Short at the Berlinale, Mirjana Balogh’s reflection on how relationships shape our identity and self-image also won the National Lottery Award at the Filem’on Festival.

Did you make a science fiction movie?

Mirjana Balogh: I guess so. I love science fiction; I dreamed of doing something in that genre, involving machines that aren’t possible in our reality.

After the opening scene, I was surprised that the man turned out to be the main character. I was sure you were going to tell the girl’s story.

Balogh: You identify him as male? I intended to present them as a non-binary person. In the world they live in, it’s hard to tell any gender apart.

Come on, he looks ultra male. His tight suit sparks your fascination for his muscular structure, and he has a beard!

Balogh: That’s not a beard; that’s a chin! I wanted the character’s face and hair to be somewhere between male and female. In my mind, it was initially a man’s body, but by swapping all these body parts, he became more feminine, more fluent. But the protagonist is ashamed of his body and covers it up in clothes the whole time.

Mirjana Balogh

Perhaps I thought he was a man because he never smiles.

Balogh: Actually, there are a few hidden smiles that you might not have noticed. But in general, the character refuses to smile. Their way of life is rather depressing; there’s not a lot to smile about.

Are you reducing humans to one single body part?

Balogh: Not at all. What I’m trying to make clear is that you carry all your relationships with you, literally, and those body parts symbolise how they shaped you as an individual. Every relationship changes us in some way. I wanted to capture how we can – or cannot – accept these changes. Some people see this transformation as a loss, while others feel that it has become an integral part of who they are. I’ve always been intrigued by how this happens. Even if I spend a week in someone’s company, I notice certain things that I copy in my speech or in my gestures. Isn’t that fascinating? And that goes even more when you’ve been in a relationship with someone. When couples break up, a lot of the other person remains within you. The exact extent of those changes has always fascinated me.

The bodies in your film are very concrete. But you show the heart both anatomically, as an organ that is cut in two, and symbolically. There are a lot of hearts in the film, and often they are more than just a physical thing.

Balogh: In the arena of relationships and breakups, the heart is the most obvious symbol; I don’t know which other shape could have been more appropriate. It also recurs in certain objects: a telephone, a robot, etc. This makes them more specific and meaningful in this phase of the characters’ lives.

Characters are often watching their own reflection. What do these people see when they look in the mirror?

Balogh: The main character, watching his reflection on the floor, was the first image I had in mind when I started this project. This picture tells the entire story and reminds me of Narcissus, who was always staring at his reflection, because that was what he loved most. When my protagonists look in the mirror, they don’t see their current selves; they see themselves the way they used to be, their original version for which they’re still longing.

Your focus is on the characters, but there are a few locations I’d like to know more about. What about the design of the city?

Balogh: It looks a bit futuristic, but not too much. It’s not a total sci-fi environment. Everywhere I go, I’m taking photos. For this film, I went through my collection and chose the ones I found most appropriate.

There’s an interesting place for recreation. What is it? A hobby club for ceramists?

Balogh: Exactly. I wanted to create a place where people could physically engage in handicrafts, contrasting with the perfect, streamlined body sculptures in the museum. If you are looking for relaxation in this over-organised society, it has to be organised in some way. A hobby club, in other words. In this case, for potters.

Some of the artworks in the museum are clearly recognisable.

Balogh: I wanted it to feel like a familiar place. That’s why there’s a painting by Matisse, for example. The entire world had to feel recognisable, but not completely; this margin of alienation makes it differ a bit from what we’re used to.

And there’s a discotheque, or at least a place where they dance… in a sensual, futuristic way. What happens there is more than just dancing

Balogh: In an earlier version, they went on a classic dinner date, which didn’t work at all. My editor, Judit Czakó, urged me to take a different approach. Dancing was an obvious solution, showing them moving closer and meeting each other. Technically, I found this part particularly challenging. I’m a terrible dancer myself, so I watched lots of dance videos, and I owe a lot to my superb animator, Luca Tóth, who completed the entire scene. She was the first person who came to my mind when I considered the dance, and she’s the one who finally did it.

You have an interesting fascination for technical processes, computer programmes, calculators, and transplantation machines. What does that tell us about you?

Balogh: My grandfather was an electrician, my father teaches physics, and I grew up with a collection of computers in the attic. Motherboards and wires were always a part of my life, and they stayed with me. Up till today, when I see an intriguing machine or some cool device, I take a photo. I’m not particularly good with machines, I just like the way they look.

There needed to be a pet. Can I call it a dog?

Balogh: It is a dog. I felt like the protagonist needed something to make him more human. He never smiles, he can’t enjoy music, so the least I could offer him was a pet. This dog has also gone through multiple breakups. In my first script, there were many scenes of the dog looking at a female dog. I loved those scenes, but I was told they were too funny, so I deleted them. What I kept were the dog’s legs in different colours; maybe then people will understand what happened. Sometimes I hear a bit of chuckling in the audience. The dog brings some relief; the film needed a dog so that it wouldn’t be too depressing.

If there is any humor to be found in the film, it’s in the first place in the title.

Balogh: Finding a title was one of my biggest challenges. I’m not very good with words, and all the super serious titles I could come up with didn’t fit the film. I adore puns, and I simply couldn’t find one, sitting at home, brooding. Until I googled ‘Ear puns’, and ended up with a hundred possible perfect titles. My father loves Pink Floyd – of course, he is a science teacher – and he was disappointed when I confessed that I hadn’t named the film after the Pink Floyd song.

You did some Q&As. Were there questions that surprised you?

Balogh: Many! The most confronting moment was at the Sarajevo Film Festival. One guy was saying how much it felt as if the movie was about him. Then he turned his head, showing me one extremely big ear. It was huge! I didn’t know what to say.

You’re a product of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, more precisely of the so-called MOME-Anim programme. Does WISH YOU WERE EAR fit the MOME-Anim tradition?

Balogh: I strongly disagree with people saying that every MOME-Anim film is the same. For me, they’re all different and unique, and I hope that my film fits in there somewhere. The film was produced by MOME with the involvement of numerous current and former students, and is promoted by MOME’s Film Knowledge Hub. You can really call this a MOME-Anim film. I love MOME-Anim!

2025 was the year of Hungarian animation! And MOME-Anim is probably one of the reasons for this revival.

Balogh: I think so. Most people working in Hungarian animation were MOME students at some point. It’s a very important place! The people teaching there are also animation artists. They themselves come from MOME-Anim, and then they go back there, creating a beautiful circle.

Your biggest personal success came at the Berlinale, where you won the Crystal Bear in the Generation+ section. What happened there?

Balogh: It was so unreal. I still can’t believe it; it’s just the craziest thing that ever happened to me, and it was hard to comprehend what was going on. I had my hotel breakfast while Michel Gondry was sitting at the table next to me. It went on for a whole week, and I had no idea what I was doing there.

Gert Hermans

“Eating the cake and the dough!”

Did you know that the living room can actually be a race track? Daddy asks Mathilde to tidy up her toy cars. For Mathilda and her two imaginary friends, this is the signal to start a tidy-up race. Cars speed through the room and under the sofa until it becomes clear that father and daughter have different views on tidying up… and therefore also on life.

THE RUMBLE-BUMBLE RALLY has a charming small-scale vibe, but technically, it accomplishes a remarkable feat by blending animation and live action smoothly. Secretly, the Norwegian Mikrofilm hopes to bring the Rumble-Bumble universe to the big screen someday, with the help of both directors, Annette Saugestad Helland and Johan Kaos, one of whom presented her work at the Filem’On Festival in Brussels.

My first question is a personal one… Do you agree that the dough is better than the cake? 

Annette Saugestad Helland: Yes! I totally agree with our main character. As a kid, you’re sort of not allowed to eat the dough because some say it can cause a stomachache. But not being allowed is part of the pleasure.

You consequently use a child’s point of view. At several moments in the film, I clearly realised: this is how a child would see things.

Saugestad Helland: Indeed, both in the story and in its visualisation. We asked ourselves all the time how children would view certain situations and tried to come up with visual solutions on how they would use their imagination. That playful approach came with technical consequences; it’s a challenge to blend live-action and animation into one credible universe, but this visual mixture of reality and fantasy is quite close to how I imagine children play.

These differing perspectives also form the basis of this story.

Saugestad Helland: From the father’s perspective, the house should be clean and tidy to welcome guests. But the kids don’t care if it’s messy; they just think about the fun they could have with all those toys. This causes a clash of perspectives. Both co-director Johan Kaos and I are familiar with the pressure on young parents to strive for perfection at all times. We wanted to oppose that. However, I sympathise with the father in the film. It is not easy to impose things on a child, but he tries his best in a friendly tone.

Matilda says: Being the first one is not important. Then what is? 

Saugestad Helland: Eating the cake and the dough! To children, it is more important that parents take the time to sit and play with them, and to feel accepted and have fun together.

Was safety in traffic ever an issue? 

Saugestad Helland: On the contrary! In this make-believe world, it was fun to indulge in irresponsible driving with toy cars. We recorded the live-action part over one week; the 15 crew members all seemed to be into cars. Nothing excited them more than making them crash; the little boy inside them blossomed! They all stood around filming with their mobile phones.

You didn’t make it easy on yourself, combining all those different techniques: Stop motion, cut-out, drawing, live-action etc.

Saugestad Helland: When blending a drawn world and a real world, that sparks the imagination. But it’s also like making two separate movies and then mixing them.

Making two movies is double the work!

Saugestad Helland: I was in charge of the animation part, while Johan was mainly working on the live-action. With the actors, everything had to be done on a small budget, as fast as possible. Whereas for the animation, the work ethics were quite the opposite. You could use a whole day to animate the whiskers of a little rabbit. Merging those two methods into one film caused a maximum amount of complications, but it was worth it. 

In the animated drawing, the landscape changes in an instant, as cars pass by. All of a sudden, flowers and trees are popping up. What was the logic behind that? 

Saugestad Helland: No logic! It’s just playing, in an attempt to visualise a child’s imagination, which is somehow an impossible thing to do. As a starting point, I had a few ideas of what could spark a child’s imagination. We chose an idea where we fantasised about what it looks like under the sofa in a house where children live, which can be relatable for parents too.

Did you research that?

Saugestad Helland: Unavoidably. I have one small child (and two older ones), Johan has two, but the chaos is similar. When it came to the practical side, we didn’t have enough space for the camera under a real sofa, so we had to recreate that environment in a studio, which felt a bit surreal. We collected potato chips, crumbs, and objects that seemed a bit scary at first glance, to create this imaginary world. We got help from a model-maker, who constructed the car models, and made a model for a piece of old bread, with an extra layer of green on top for the mould.

The character design is indeterminate and genderless. I think one is a rabbit, but I’m not even sure. 

Saugestad Helland: I often work with children in animation workshops, where they design imaginary creatures by combining different animals. That is where these characters originated. They are Mathilde´s imaginary friends, and therefore, have to look a bit quirky.

What you did with the lighting was amazing. Despite the darkness under the sofa, you combine real light, studio lighting, and animated light. Your lighting schedule must have looked incredibly complex. 

Saugestad Helland: We used a significant amount of Christmas lights, which created the perfect atmosphere on camera. We had an excellent photographer, and there was Konrad Hjemli, who had the task of composing the animated and studio lights, sitting for long hours on this precision work. He was our hero. People were constantly lugging Christmas lights around the set, and then he skillfully had to erase their hands from the picture.

Those car wheels spinning uselessly on the edge of the couch look super realistic.

Saugestad Helland: We used an extra set of wheels that we retrofitted in the editing process to create some extra spin. It seemed as if we were making a car chase movie for children. Co-director Johan Kaos was in charge of moving the cars. He had the best week of his life; he was so much into it. 

Do you have a favourite car chase movie?

Saugestad Helland: That would be THE PINCHCLIFFE GRAND PRIX, a Norwegian children’s classic from 1975 by Ivo Caprino. I just love that film!

Your producers were Tonje Skar Reiersen and Lise Fearnley from Mikrofilm

Saugestad Helland: This film could never have been made without them. 10 years ago, I made a film, set in this Rumble Bumble world, MORNINGBIRD AND MURMELTON ON WINTER HOLIDAY. Tonje was willing to descend into that universe with me once again. Now, there might be plans for a feature Rumble Bumble movie. We received development support from the Norwegian Film Institute. Did you know that in the opening scene, when father is baking a cake according to a recipe from the radio, it’s Tonje’s voice that you hear? She is the film’s heroine in so many ways!

Gert Hermans

“I was surprised when a visitor called it a mess”

A metal bicycle tyre that bursts when it runs over a nail… I find that irresistibly funny! The fragile appearance of the title character, the laconic soundtrack, the consistent use of metal throughout the film’s design… These are the qualities that make ROBOT LEO a worthy ambassador for Estonia, where dry observations and understated reactions are the norm. The same can be said about the two directors, the deadpan sisters Silja Saarepuu and Piret Sigus, aka the Animailm Studio.  

Leo the Robot lives with his cat in a cosy, rusty cottage. One fine day, he is expecting a visit from Lilleliisu. Leo wants to make a good impression – the table needs to be set. But the more the big moment approaches, the more Leo’s anxiety grows. 

Leo is a metal robot, but does he have a personality, an identity of his own? 

Silja Saarepuu: He is a bachelor, sharing his house with a cat. We have two bachelor friends who are always inventing and repairing stuff. Leo is modeled after them. 

Piret Sigus: Leo’s house is designed after their houses, full of stuff and loose parts, waiting to be used one day. We compressed those two characters into one Leo. 

But the first inspiration was a children’s book.  

Saarepuu: ROBOT LEO’S SPECIAL DAY by author and illustrator Pusa is a lovely book for children who are learning to read. Pusa allowed us total freedom; she was happy that we brought her creation to life, with a slightly extended narrative. The book is also the reason why we have two versions of the film: with and without a narrator’s voice.  

Why would you need a narrator? It’s not going to get even funnier than it already is. 

Sigus: We believe that the film works better with a narrator who reads the original verses from the book in a warm, grandfatherly tone. But some festivals prefer the version without, to overcome language barriers. 

Did you work exclusively with metal? Or did you sometimes trick the audience? 

Sigus: Analogue robots are made out of metal – that’s crucial! Even the cat is made of a wire spring, covered with textile, and the trees are made out of nails. We cheated a tiny bit with the backgrounds; some smaller trees are made of hot glue. 

Saarepuu: We only used a green screen for one scene, and for the title and end credits. “Handcrafted in every detail” is Animailm’s motto. In our previous productions, we used fine textile techniques, like embroidery. This time, we were crafting metal. 

How to animate such non-flexible material, and still make it look very much alive? 

Sigus: You can animate with simply everything; didn’t you realise that? We work on the glass surface of a multiplane table, and I was worried the metal would scratch the glass, but we saved it with the use of velvet and paper. 

Saarepuu: And with the help of Marilli Sokk, our excellent animator, who set all the different elements in motion. 

Leo’s legs seem to be endless. 

Saarepuu: To make the legs flexible, we constructed little pieces, like shells, that you can stack on top of each other. We had so many loose shells that we could extend those legs endlessly. Like in the shot in which Leo grows all the way till the attic of the house, while the cat is watching down upon him. We called that our DIE HARD shot; Leo rises upward like Bruce Willis in the iconic ventilation shaft scene. 

What about his eyes? How to put an expression in that dead material? 

Saarepuu: Leo has a wire spring attached to the back of his head, which makes his eyes move simultaneously. We could even open and close them. 

Sigus: When Leo is surprised, his pupils grow bigger. They are like little bowls; the more surprised he is, the bigger the bowls. We worked the same way with his mouth, which is like a little radiator.  

I was especially fascinated by the objects that, in reality, would never be made of metal: a bicycle tire, a balloon, laundry, etc.  

Sigus: We conducted numerous tests to identify the most suitable materials. The balloon was one of the most difficult searches. The outline is made of metal, but we strung balloon fabric over it. If you look closely, you can see that it is slightly transparent. 

Saarepuu: Leo is hanging the laundry out to dry as his way of cleaning the house. He wants to find his most beautiful tablecloth – I suppose he washed them first. His entire house is filled with small tables. 

That involved a great deal of welding work. Was that done by one of the bachelors Leo was based on? 

Sigus: They were too clumsy for such a meticulous task. We had to bring in a third bachelor. Saarepuu: Just before making the film, he bought himself a micro welding machine. The film was his ultimate practice to find out how the machine worked. He welded hearts on the cups in several stages, with the heart growing bigger each time.  

Leo lives in a house with the stairs on the outside  

Sigus: For the cat! Leo doesn’t need stairs. 

Saarepuu: It looks a lot like the houses of one of those bachelors. I also remembered an image I saw in Romania. There were two wealthy neighbours; one house had four roofs, and his next-door neighbour had five. I suspect that they were competing with each other. 

The presence of metal also affects the sound. 

Sigus: We gathered all the metal objects in our sound studio and rattled them in front of the microphone. We recorded all that clamour and picked the best results. For instance, when Leo is coming up fast, we used the sound of an old-fashioned drill machine. 

A merry ‘poing poing poing’ sound lends Lilleliisu her particularly cheerful character. 

Saarepuu: In the bachelors’ workshops, we found a metal string that created this festive noise. We also used a mouth harp – our composer Ramo has this ability to make music with just anything! It makes Lilleliisu look very shiny – the sounds add a bit of spice to her joyfulness, though she looks also happy in silent mode. 

How should I imagine your studio, both during and after this movie? 

Sigus: It’s a place where people work; it’s not like an office. It looked very normal to us, with metal pieces and scrap lying around everywhere. We still haven’t found the time to clean it up. 

Saarepuu: It looks a bit like Leo’s house itself. I was surprised when a visitor called it a mess. It doesn’t look like that to us. 

Your last film, THE TURNIP, was made in an underground studio. 

Sigus: In a small basement under my garage. My family wasn’t too happy about it; they had had enough of all those people coming and going every day to work on our film. We moved the studio out to a bigger and more expensive place. The more space you have, the more mess you can throw around, but there is nobody to complain about it. 

Gert Hermans 

“Like the landscape: strong, and firmly anchored”

Feliciano’s number one passion is football. He even named his alpaca after his favourite player, Ronaldo! Feliciano is overjoyed when he hears that Peru can qualify for the World Cup, but there is not much time to dream. His father gave him one more task to fulfil: to take care of the alpacas in the mountains. But modern machinery threatens both his dream and his job. This film, presented at Filem’On by director Franco García Becerra, doesn’t draw from the excitement of football stages, but from the silence of the mountains, where life slips by slowly, like the clouds that hang around the heads of the people living on the highest Andes peaks.

Congratulations! Peru qualified for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. 

Franco García Becerra: For the first time in 36 years! That caused a real euphoria in Peru. Like most Peruvians, I love football. But that national joy contrasted sharply with the social distress in our country. 

In the opening scene, Feliciano walks through the field, looking for a radio signal to listen to the football match. In doing so, you illustrate a conflict between nature and modern society?

García Becerra: Nature is part of our lives. In the villages where the film is set, this connection is even stronger. Nature there is pure, and present in all aspects of life. So it wasn’t so much about conflict as it was about registering everyday life.

The mining industry thoroughly disturbs that beautiful nature.

García Becerra: By showing the beauty of this region, you realise how threatened it is. Nature, the village community and the whole cosmology of the Andes are based on balance. When the outside world brutally disrupts that balance, it triggers a lot of things in the community. It also awakens mythical forces. In fact, the whole filming process was full of magic.

In what way?

García Becerra: When we found our lead actor Alberth Merma, he was too shy to talk on camera. During the workshops, we saw his self-confidence grow. For the story, we also needed a dog and a baby alpaca that was used to the presence of people. Not easy to find! Until we visited Alberth at home in his village on the mountain, almost in the snow. Suddenly a dog came running towards us, jumping up to him. It turned out to be Alberth’s dog, Rambo. A little later, a young alpaca came trickling by, and Alberth climbed on its back. He had a pet alpaca! In disbelief, I looked at the production team… we had our entire main cast together. When you are respectful in life, with the belief that your wishes can come true, sometimes things happen naturally. I experienced the whole film as a gift.

Rambo the Dog and Ronaldo the Alpaca are Feliciano’s only friends. Yet Feliciano does not seem to be a lonely child. 

García Becerra: In the Andes, animals are part of everyday life; presumably it’s like that wherever shepherds live with their animals. He seems all alone in that endless landscape, but he is not. The land, the mountains, the lakes and rivers, the plains and animals… Everything is part of our cosmology. Feliciano is always surrounded by nature. 

Your film also goes by the title THROUGH ROCKS AND CLOUDS. What did you find so special about the iconography of rocks and stones?

García Becerra: In this village, the people are like the landscape: strong, and firmly anchored. That symbolises their strength – whatever changes may come, these stones and this village are there forever. At 5,000 metres, you are almost in the clouds, and that too is a metaphor. The hard stones represent strength, the clouds represent dreams and desires that you can almost touch, but sometimes still slip through your fingers.

With stones you can build beautiful towers. 

García Becerra: Feliciano collects stones; you find so many different shapes and colours there. During the shoot, I asked Alberth to build a tower with them, as people often do there. Then we discovered what a master builder he is. Building a tower like this is quite difficult, but he always found the right stone; for him, it’s like playing with Lego. He also found the brick that looks like a human face. One day he slipped during a rehearsal, and that’s how he found the stone that looks like an alpaca. I definitely wanted that one in the film! I told you: these were magical moments!

In essence, this is a socio-political story. 

García Becerra: Social problems are usually viewed from the point of view of adults, without asking ourselves how children feel about them. It was difficult to explain the situation with the mines without changing perspective, yet our gaze consistently stayed with Feliciano, and how his life was affected by the situation. The situation forces him to act on his own and make a decision, though we don’t know where it will lead him. Such is the social, geo-political reality in many Latin American countries. Throughout the story, Feliciano acts on the things that are important to him: the animals and his friendship with the alpaca.

At a people’s meeting, someone says aloud, ‘Who wants that gold and silver? We don’t need it.’ Mining companies are not inclined to take residents into account. 

García Becerra: We filmed in a mining region, so the residents you see in the film are familiar with the issues. When we shot this scene, everyone came up to discuss freely. The film doesn’t take a stand, but opposes irresponsible mining without respect for the environment, focused solely on economic progress. The character Grimaldo is the exception; he wants progress for himself and his family, which he hopes to find in the mines. The industry brings division within a community. Because the miners also come from this region, and this condition puts them at odds with their fellow citizens.

Many actors in the film are ordinary people from that area?

García Becerra: Almost all the actors are from Llanacancha or surrounding villages in the district. We consulted with representatives from the villages so they knew what our plans were. Only the actors playing Feliciano’s parents are from Puno, a town on the shores of Lake Titicaca. But mining companies operate everywhere throughout southern Peru, so everyone is familiar with the theme. By working with local actors, you also tell the story of the villages and their inhabitants, which lends extra authenticity to the film.

There is an important role for Auki Tayta, a mythical personification of nature. 

García Becerra: Auki Tayta is part of the cosmology of the Andes. There are numerous divine entities that protect us, such as Pachamama and Apu, the mountain – which is why sacrifices are made to him. The film shows a free interpretation of this. Therefore, you don’t get a complete picture of Auki Tayta; we only want to convey an impression of something supernatural, yet tangibly present. The fascinating thing is that such entities cannot be defined as good or evil – Andean cosmology revolves around balance and equilibrium.

Indeed… Auki Tayta offers help when Feliciano is in need, but the family is also afraid of him.

García Becerra: Out of respect! You don’t want to offend such an entity; it represents the earth that gives us food, and so much more. You want to propitiate Auki Tayta and not enter his territory without respect. Mining does not take that into account; it is they who anger him. Auki Tayta has protected the alpacas, but he won’t just give them back to you. You have to earn such a favour, for instance by making a sacrifice to the earth. In the Andes, reciprocity is an important concept. It indicates togetherness in a community. Today I do something for you, maybe tomorrow you will do something for me. Giving and receiving, now and later.

You yourself are from the city?

García Becerra: I live in Lima, but am originally from Cusco. From there it’s about three hours by car to Ocongate, and from there another hour to the villages where we shot the film. My knowledge of the region was limited. But screenwriter Annemarie Gunkel has family in Pacchanta. She knows daily life there and how it is affected by the presence of the mines.

The miners and protesting villagers interrupt their tussle to watch a football match together.

García Becerra: In the middle of the brawl comes the news that Peru has qualified for the World Cup. What a contrast! At the moment when we should be celebrating, we are fighting. Football should unite the country, but the social situation divides us. The political conflict in Peru continues to drag on; that’s why I didn’t want to wrap it up in the film. 

Despite those different opinions, does everyone in Peru still love football?

García Becerra: We do! Sport does tend to be used to cover social or political problems. That happens in so many countries; you can’t blame sport for that.

Jef De Bock

The “Youngsters Jury” consists of 6 European members (ages 16-21) who judge 5 feature films during their stay at the festival in Frankfurt, Germany (September 25th – October 2nd , 2025). The films in the competition »Youngsters« feature relatively mature topics and demanding aesthetics. At the closing ceremony they will deliver their statement and present the LUCAS Youngsters Award that comes with a prize money of 5.000 €.

Time Frame:

• August/September: Online-meeting with all jury members of the YOUNGSTERS JURY to get
  to know each other a bit
• During the festival week (September 25th – October 2nd , 2025):
  • Opening ceremony
  • 5 film screenings each evening
  • Meetings each day to discuss the films between yourself
  • final group discussion and decision about the winning film, written statement for
    the closing ceremony
  • closing ceremony with presentation of the award and statement
  • otherwise light schedule (time to enjoy other parts of the festival, network, see
    the city, spend time as a group)

Travel and accommodation:

• • LUCAS pays for travel (flights/train) and accommodation (youth hostel).
  • Breakfast included as well as a vegetarian lunch at the film museum.
  • The only thing you have to pay for is dinner
  • A team member will pick you up from the train station/airport and bring you to the festival
    center by public transportation

Interested? 

Contact participe.filemon@gmail.com

After an exciting Award Ceremony, the 18th edition of the International Film Festival for Young Audiences, Filem’On has come to an end. We were ecstatic to finally be able to welcome you in the cinemas of Brussels! It was a wonderful edition! We enjoyed every minute of it and hopefully you did too! Together we look forward to the next edition in 2024! As for now, Filem’On is very excited to announce the 2024 festival laureates!

Scroll down in the green frame to read the complete newsletter.

“A dirty T-shirt but a clean moustache”

Years after the death of his mother, 13 year old Karim has left Paris for Morocco with his father, who has remarried. Karim joins the newly blended family for a summer in Boujad. Muddled by the anxieties of adolescence, the “little Frenchman” struggles to adjust to his new surroundings until he meets the mysterious outsider Mehdi. Meanwhile, his father is finding it difficult to adjust and even more challenging to relate to a boy beginning to show signs of rebellion. 

The film about family ties is one of the revelations of the Filem’on festival. We met both French and Belgian crew members. Two producers, the DoP and the composer talk about recording a sensitive, soft film in a tough environment.

What kind of place is Boujad? 

Valentin Leblanc (producer): It is a small, isolated city in central Morocco, far away from the big economic centres, but it is also a holy city and a place for pilgrimage. Boujad has a great spiritual value in Morocco and in the entire Islamic world.

Delphine Duez (producer): During pandemic times, it was almost impossible to reach that place. Even for director Omar Mouldouir it wasn’t obvious.

How was it to be there?

Jean-Marc Selva (DoP): Extremely hot. No tourists would go there. It didn’t feel very spiritual to me. It’s a tough place, hot in summer and very cold in winter. 

A SUMMER IN BOUJAD is a French-Moroccan-Belgian co-production. Why would a producer be interested in a project like this? 

Duez: I met Moroccan co-producer Mohamed Nadif in a producers’ meeting in Cannes and immediately fell in love with the scenario. Omar’s writing is wonderful. We stepped into it as an interesting “adventure in humanity”.

Leblanc: The script evolved drastically – at some point it read like a Moroccan THE GOONIES, full of action and adventure.

So that is what a producer does? Cutting out all the adventurous parts?

Leblanc: The financial department took care of that by cutting back the money. For many debuts – and this one was no exception – a director might write a script in multiple directions, with few boundaries. This freedom in writing leaves you with countless options, but at some point you need to find out what you really want to tell, what is the core of your project. Every debut can be tricky when directors put inside everything they have, as if it will be their first and last chance.

Selva: For people remembering their childhood very precisely, this is an exercise in letting go.

The story is set in 1986. How did you reconstruct the past in a place where time has not been standing still?

Selva: The scenes on the main square were the most important, but Boujad has turned into a hectic city, full of cars, and low-budget films can’t afford to digitally clean up every shot. We know there are flaws in the images, but we had to shoot it like this or not make the film at all.

In A SUMMER IN BOUJAD both father and son are searching for their roots.

Leblanc: It’s a reversed story about migration. These people once were rooted in Morocco but they ‘unrooted’ themselves a long time ago. Karim has been raised in the Paris suburbs; now his father returns to where he came from, a long time ago. Finding your roots in a place that should be ‘yours’ but where you feel like a stranger, was an important element in the life of the director. 

Duez: Karim is no longer a child. As an adolescent, this is the moment he will decide who he wants to be. All his encounters will define the person he will become.

Thanks to the father, we get to see one of the most clean-shaved moustaches in film history.

Leblanc: Only Clark Gable could compete with him. The guy always has a dirty T-shirt, dirty pants… but a clean moustache.

One thing that might help you in your search, is a mentor, someone to guide you. Is that a role for Mehdi to play?

Leblanc: He is a bad mentor, leading you on the wrong path. Like the Gandalf of Crime. Throughout the story Karim is searching for an identity that could fit him. He searches with his father, with kids from the neighbourhood, with women from different ages, and none of it seems to match. Mehdi is the only person he connects with but they’re fundamentally different and it’s not the path he should take in life. Only at the end of the film, we get a glimpse of how a connection with his father and his mother-in-law could evolve, somewhere in the future. He is just getting started.

There is this great scene that throws an intriguing question on the table; what happens with movie characters after the credits?

Selva: If the film is bad, they die. If the film is good, they live on forever.

I was amazed how in this film you played with light and shadows.

Selva: The daylight is very bright and aggressive. Shooting outside under a vertical sun, the light is extremely bright, there is no shadow and all eyes turn dark. It’s terrible; you can’t capture any emotion on a face. Working on a small budget, we had to shoot everything at any moment possible. We couldn’t afford being picky.

What about the music?

Simon Fransquet (composer): When I first met Omar, he fell in love with the sound of the charango, a Peruvian instrument. We wondered how it would sound if using it in Arabic music. We took some Arabic tonalities and adapted them. Due to a scholarship, I did my composing on the set in Morocco, which is a unique opportunity. In the evening at the hotel I presented themes that I composed, and we discussed how sound and vision could enforce one another. For the final song we asked Yasmine Meddour, and had the lyrics translated in Arabic, like a mother singing a lullaby for her child. When Omar heard the result for the first time, he cried.

One particular emotion was ‘anger’. The film is soft and touching, but in some characters I can feel the anger bubbling underneath.

Duez: That is an evolution that Omar went through himself. There is misunderstanding and anger, then sadness and sorrow, and finally forgiveness, acceptance and redemption.

What about the storks, coming and going and building their nests?

Selva: They were there and they are still; they belong to the place. Storks deliver babies; when Karim is looking everywhere for a mother, he even looks at the sky, at the storks. They are building their nests, while Karim is looking for a home. Metaphorically it’s all there. They were not in the script though, and they were difficult to capture on camera. 

Today you had a Q&A session with kids. Maybe I can draw from their inspiration… What was the best question you got from them?

Selva: What was the title of the film?

Gert Hermans

“Kids’ grief is like a zebra’s stripes: on and off”

Sofia, Hedvig and Maja are sisters with a common sorrow: their mother Carolina took her own life in 2010. Each of them is dealing with the pain on her own… until Swedish director Jenifer Malqvist pointed her camera at them. Suddenly the girls talk about things that seemed long forgotten, like fragments from another life. The camera captures them during different phases in their life, and always stays with the girls – this is not their mother’s story, it’s theirs. 

The film starts with the girls, still very young, playing hide and seek. One of them covers her eyes, and for a moment you’d think she’s about to burst into tears…

Jenifer Malmqvist: Closing your eyes is a kind of self-defence. They don’t want to face what has happened but sooner or later they’ll have to. That part of the process is captured in the film. I find the image powerful – a similar picture was already used in the very first application for financing.

Can you tell us about the genesis of this project?

Malmqvist: Sweden has a strong children’s film tradition, but in 2010 film researcher Malena Janson concluded that our production had become rather shallow. Therefore she summoned 10 film directors to make one short film each, not shying away from challenging topics. At that moment I heard what had happened to Carolina, whom I vaguely knew – we met once through a mutual friend. On that occasion she came across as a ray of sunshine, so happy and lively. Now I was shocked. Remembering her three daughters, I arranged a meeting with Maja – the oldest one – and asked if she would be interested in making a film. The sisters agreed and we started filming in 2011. Quickly it became clear that the potential was much bigger than a short film. When one of the girls no longer felt comfortable, we stopped filming for a while, but then picked up the idea again at the request of producer WG Film. The fact that the girls were a bit older now changed the dynamic.

When comparing the conversations in the first and the second round, 10 years later, what would be the main difference?

Malmqvist: Kids’ reflections are very direct; they are completely in the here and now and don’t reflect about the future. That might be a blessing at first, but hit you hard later. Only when growing older, the girls realised the consequences in a different way. Sofia and Hedvig have a one dimensional memory of their mum, while Maja has a more complete picture of who she really was. 

Were you just a fly on the wall, recording conversations?

Malmqvist: I asked the girls how often they talked about it. “Only when you are here. We wish we could talk about it more often but it simply never happens.” I interviewed them only twice, not even planning to include the footage into the film, but my editor found it too good not to use it. The interview on the boat is so straight-forwardly direct. For a documentary, the content will always be more important than the cinematography.

Is comfort something you can only find in yourself or can you find it in others?

Malmqvist: Basically we are alone with our worries. But even if human species are lone wolves, we’re part of a hurd. When you meet a person who speaks about things that you feel deep inside too, you won’t feel so alone anymore. That was the girls’ intention from day one: if this can help others, then let’s do it. That is partly the strength of the film. After screenings people come to tell me: “My father committed suicide and me and my brother never knew how to talk about it.” Then what is there for me to say? Not much, I guess.

The girls are also lone wolves, following their own mourning routine.

Malmqvist: Children’s grief differs immensely depending upon their age. A 5 year old will react totally differently to the death of a parent than a 12 year old. In Sweden we say that kids’ grief is like a zebra’s stripes: on and off. Hedvig says: “Now that I’m with my cousins, I don’t think about it.” But when going to bed, thoughts suddenly well up. A grown-up’s mind wouldn’t work like that, but maybe we could try more often.

Daughters are also sisters, and sisters are special!

Malmqvist: SISTERS was on our list of possible titles, but through DAUGHTERS we can also include their mum. Carolina is a character in the film, without being in it. The girls will always be her daughters, and all of them are funny and creative in their own way. I’m endlessly proud about these girls. 

And you learned from them.

Malmqvist: A lot! Like: if you really want to help someone, then learn how to listen, without advice, without judgement. Compared to other living species, we are bad listeners. You can find comfort in a dog or a cat; animals know how to listen and they don’t judge. In our world of today, before we start talking, we first need to create room, space for conversation.

While you had plenty of material in your hands to tell a sentimental story, how did you resist the temptation?

Malmqvist: My main ambition was to make an honest film. Emotions were allowed, as long as they were honest and worthwhile. I screened the final cut for the three girls – my most frightening moment! They thought everything felt right, in the true spirit of who they are.

Living rooms and kitchens in general are not the most camera-friendly settings.

Malmqvist: You need a great DoP to succeed, and I had one. Ita Zbroniec-Zajt is one of the best in Sweden. Who else would be crazy enough to provide me with 40 close ups of teddy bears? She sees things that others don’t see. Remember the little dog on the table, stealing quesadillas. After I wrapped up that scene, she continued filming and shot that funny clip.

And sometimes, suddenly, a moment of beauty hits you. Like images of laundry hanging out to dry at the deck, or two horses cuddling… 

Malmqvist: We made a film with three protagonists, set in different periods… How to glue all those pieces together? One of the tricks we used was opening our ‘box of animals’ in the editing room – after every heavy scene, we needed the contrast. 

Was this film made on the set or in the editing room?

Malmqvist: We arrived in the editing room with 80 hours of footage for which Åsa Mossberg constructed a skeleton, a framework. Editing this project was very much about diving into life’s bigger questions. After the first cut I couldn’t work for three days – I was devastated from diving too deep in other people’s grief.  

Gert Hermans

“A cocktail of explosive madness”

When his best friend starts dealing drugs for a local gang, 12 year old Abdel has no other choice than helping him when he gets in trouble. Against his will Abdi gets drawn into criminal activities and is held responsible for the death of a gang member. Catching up with normal life no longer seems an option, but you might wonder what ‘normal life’ really means in the segregated area where he grows up.

Actor Khalil Ghazal grew up in a rough neighbourhood. More than about BULLETS, he wants to express an opinion about the context of the story: the social emergency that gives Stockholm a bad reputation, and the way in which the government and the community choose to close their eyes to an alarming situation.

Khalil Ghazal: This film was made two years ago. Ever since, this plague of gang violence in Sweden has spread even further and reached a level that we never realised was possible. This sounds so un-Swedish in many ways; it’s a side of the country that we prefer not to show. That is why BULLETS comes with a 15+ age limit, cutting us off from our initial audience.

Did you have any hesitations about playing a character that promotes gang violence?

Ghazal: After I played a gang recruiter in the TV-series SNABBA CASH, I thought I wouldn’t accept such a role again. But the script for BULLETS had an authentic feel – I was born and raised in that place. The movie was made by this community and kept everything in the community: jobs, rental spaces, catering… For director Peter Pontikis it was a project from the heart; he had worked in this community for about 20 years and based his story on interviews he did with young people, criminals, politicians… The story shows how even children with a stable background can get involved with gang violence. Kids get recruited as child soldiers already at age 12 or 13 and they’re ready to kill. Nowadays a lot of our human essence has been depleted. Combined with the romanticisation of a gangster lifestyle, this becomes a cocktail of explosive madness. 

In what way is it romanticised?

Ghazal: Where I come from, many kids don’t have father figures to look up to. If the neighbourhood gangster is the only role model you have in your vicinity, because he has a gold watch and chain and drives a fancy car, he is going to be the one that you want to be like. Violence was never glamorised in this film, neither was it exaggerated – it was even toned down a bit.

On the set you might have been more than just an actor. A role model perhaps?

Ghazal: SNABBA CASH was a huge success on Swedish TV. The first season was glorifying a certain morality – everything for the gang! Suddenly, everybody wanted to be a gangster and uphold a lifestyle that is unattainable by any other means than by money earned on drugs and violence, which could lead to getting a lot of kids killed some day. That is not what I wanted; I want to direct them towards something more positive. I show them: you can act the role of a gangster without being one. The last 10 years I have close to 50 friends who have been stabbed, shot, killed, but the Swedish government prefers to turn a blind eye. BULLETS could have been used to teach police officers, doctors, social workers…  but they decided not to use it to teach people under 15! That is why we ourselves go around, speaking about the movie. Meanwhile kids keep on dying and the government doesn’t know how to handle it. Their latest suggestion is to bring in the military, as if we’re living in a police state. 

Could the story have taken place in any Swedish town, or is it strictly related to Stockholm?

Ghazal: Stockholm is where the gang conflict began; nowadays it has spread over the entire country. Stockholm is leading in gun violence in the entire of Europe! We’re holding up the perfect image, but what we gain in organisation and efficiency, we sometimes lack in humanity. Our society is becoming more and more individualistic: You do you and I do me; you sit on your space in the bus and I sit on mine. Economically suffering communities have a stronger tendency to stick together. And once you’ve been indoctrinated by the clan, you can’t escape from it. Finally, most of these kids are simply looking for a family, for solidarity.

Are friendship and solidarity the same?

Ghazal: Solidarity often doesn’t come from a sense of companionship but from fear or loneliness. But while your neighbourhood and the kids you’re with grow tighter as a group, they also make you more vulnerable to the recruitment of the older kids. All the decency that we still had in the nineties and early twenties, isn’t there anymore. You’ll see 13-15 year old kids drugged out, every day. You hear about a 13 year old carrying a gun, a 14 year old who shot somebody, a 15 year old serving life in prison. A child soldier taking a hit for the team and killing someone will serve a few years in a juvenile prison and then be a part of the gang. But by the time he comes out, there might be no more gang left, because everybody is dead or in jail. These are the harsh realities that we’re telling children about.

Where can such children go for better prospects? To school?

Ghazal: Schools nowadays are understaffed and a lot of youth houses have been closed down. If kids don’t have a place to go after school, where will they go? They’ll go hang around the hood, where gangsters can easily approach them. “Can you keep this bag for me?”, “Can you deliver this message for me?” and then finally “Can you hide this gun for me?” This movie wants to reach those kids before that happens.

Where to situate the main character Abdel in this spectrum?

Ghazal: Meeting Abdel, I recognised myself. As if I was looking into a time machine, seeing myself 15 years ago. Tomas Samir (playing Abdel) had a lot of weight on his shoulders, and I wanted him to feel comfortable. To this day, we are still in contact. I try to be like a big brother to him, pushing him not to give up on this career.

Do we all have a wrong image of the Swedish nation?

Ghazal: Socialism died with Olaf Palme in 1986. He was one of the last great humanitarian voices in Sweden. Now when the UN decided about humanitarian aid in Gaza, Sweden has put down its foot. They didn’t vote for humanitarian aid – that’s the first time I feel politically ashamed to be Swedish. In today’s society, not speaking up is like choosing the side of the oppressor. Did you know that ‘per capita’, Sweden is a world leader in the manufacturing and selling of weapons. Who are we selling to? Follow the money, and you’ll see what the political agendas are leaning towards. 

Gert Hermans