New York International Children’s Film Festival

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares189 Views

    2024 New York International Children’s Film Festival Preview

    by

    A range of films, many of them animated, some hilarious, some serious, bubble up at this year’s festival in New York, where kids can vote for awards.One of the cinematic highlights of the 2024 New York International Children’s Film Festival could be described, at least partly, as a wild-goose chase. Or, more precisely, a domestic-hen chase.That animated feature, “Chicken for Linda!,” follows a guilt-stricken single mother trying to buy the main ingredient of her daughter’s favorite dish. But since grocers are on strike in their French city, the desperate mother steals a live hen. The bird flees from her car’s trunk to a watermelon truck to the space behind an armoire, with adults and children, including the high-spirited young daughter, Linda, in hot pursuit.A simple farce? Not exactly. The film, by Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach, also includes time shifts, a singing ghost, an exploration of memory and multiple references to death — that of Louis XVI and Linda’s beloved father, as well as the chicken’s potential demise. Done in loose, almost abstract animation, the movie, which is billed as the festival’s “centerpiece spotlight,” is about as far as an audience can get from typical commercial children’s fare.It is also exactly the kind of unusual work to expect at the festival, which begins on Saturday and continues on weekends through March 17 with a slate of 18 feature presentations and more than 70 short films. About three-quarters of those titles are animated.“I think when you see live action, you’re very enraptured with someone else’s story,” Maria-Christina Villaseñor, the festival’s programming director, said in an interview. But with animation, she added, “you’re very excited also about your own, because I think you’re paying attention to the medium, you’re paying attention to the way that artists are using different techniques and different storytelling approaches. That really forefronts the idea of creativity and possibility.”Villaseñor and Nina Guralnick, the festival’s executive director, did not set out to focus on animation this year, but found that those films were often the most interesting. Ever since the festival’s founding in 1997, it has shown its audience — cinemagoers as young as 3 and as old as 18 — work that they’re unlikely to see anywhere else, including features that have previously been shown almost exclusively at festivals for adults.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      Growing a Generation of Movie-Loving Global Citizens

      by

      The selections at this year’s New York International Children’s Film Festival blend fantastical elements with serious real-world themes.The characters in the offerings at the 2023 New York International Children’s Film Festival often resolve crises in unexpected ways: by tossing magical seeds. Or slamming enchanted doors. Or, in what may be the most startling example, following a giant porcupine as it lumbers through the streets of Rotterdam.These fantastical elements, however, appear alongside realities that more commercial movies for young people usually avoid. This year’s festival, which begins on Friday evening and continues for three weekends — two in Manhattan and Brooklyn theaters, and one at the Sag Harbor Cinema on Long Island — explores subjects like the civil war in Syria, accelerating threats of natural disaster, the plight of unauthorized immigrants and, in one short documentary, the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on a family with members in both New York and Odesa. Now in its 26th year, the festival seeks not just to entertain young audiences but also to expand their worldviews.“There’s a concerted effort to talk about human rights and focus on global citizenry,” Maria-Christina Villaseñor, the festival’s programming director, said in an interview. But, she added, “I think that playfulness is really rolling out in all kinds of interesting ways throughout our slate.”That menu, comprising 16 features and nearly 60 short films, which will be offered entirely in person for the first time since 2020, begins with Friday’s world premiere of “Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia.” (This title and many others will be shown more than once.) An animated film from France and Luxembourg, it follows Ernest, a gruff but good-hearted bear, and Celestine, a vivacious mouse, as they journey to Ernest’s homeland to have his cherished violin, a “Stradibearius,” repaired. Once there, they’re shocked to learn that the country has prohibited almost all music-making.“Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia,” which will make its world premiere at the festival, follows a bear and a mouse on a wild journey that touches on themes of autocracy and personal autonomy.GKIDS/StudioCanalThe filmmakers, Julien Chheng and Jean-Christophe Roger (Roger will visit the festival for an opening-night Q. and A.), have filled the movie with wild chases, narrow escapes and a full-fledged musical resistance. But it also touches on autocracy and personal autonomy — relevant themes in a world where dissenters are sometimes imprisoned and certain children’s books are being banned.“Kids are able to enter these films at the level that they are comfortable or ready for,” said Nina Guralnick, the executive director of the festival, which offers titles for viewers as young as 3 and has a jury that judges a broad swath of the short films. (The prizewinners then become eligible for Academy Award consideration.) “But that’s also what makes those films last,” she said, “because they will come back and think about them as their thinking becomes more sophisticated.”The Projectionist Chronicles the Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.The Tom Cruise Factor: Stars were starstruck when the “Top Gun: Maverick” headliner showed up at the Oscar nominees luncheon.An Andrea Riseborough FAQ: Confused about the brouhaha surrounding the best actress nominee? We explain why her nod was controversial.Sundance and the Oscars: Which films from the festival could follow “CODA” to the 2024 Academy Awards.A Supporting-Actress Underdog: In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” don’t discount the pivotal presence of Stephanie Hsu.Marya Zarif, a Syrian-born filmmaker who lives in Montreal, said in a video interview that she intended “Dounia & the Princess of Aleppo,” the Canadian and French animated feature that she directed with André Kadi, to be a festival film to which young viewers can repeatedly return for new insights.Dounia, its vibrant 6-year-old heroine, sees the war steadily encroaching on her joyful life in Syria. But she has powerful protection: nigella seeds, a Middle Eastern spice. In the movie, they have mystical properties that Dounia discovers after she and her grandparents become refugees on a dangerous and sometimes heartbreaking odyssey.“I needed a magic that was rooted in Dounia’s culture,” said Zarif, who will appear via video link for a post-screening Q. and A. on Sunday. “And I needed something very small but that had big effects, like Dounia herself.”The festival also has fare for viewers well into their teens. “Suzume,” an anime feature by Makoto Shinkai that is already a blockbuster in Japan, will receive its North American premiere at the festival on Sunday.The title character, an orphaned high school student who lives with her aunt, encounters Souta, a youth who is “a closer” — one who has the task of shutting ordinary-looking doors that, when left open, unleash terrors like earthquakes and tsunamis. When a spell transforms Souta into a walking, talking chair, Suzume shoulders his world-saving burden.Such stories of female empowerment are a favorite with the festival, which annually features the short-film program “Girls’ POV.” Its offerings this year include a story that illustrates the frustrations of obtaining menstrual products and a documentary about an American all-girl tackle football league.Girls also take charge in the Dutch live-action feature “Okthanksbye,” whose two main characters are deaf 13-year-olds. When the beloved Parisian grandmother of one of the teenagers is hospitalized, they leave their Netherlands boarding school and head to France. Portrayed by Mae van de Loo and Douae Zine El Abidine — young, deaf first-time actresses — the girls embark on an adventure that includes traveling with a female punk band.The film’s director, Nicole van Kilsdonk, who wrote the script with Lilian Sijbesma, said the movie wasn’t meant to be about disability, even though the girls’ situations — one has a cochlear implant; one doesn’t — play a role. Van Kilsdonk, who on Saturday will attend the first of two open-captioned screenings and take part in a sign-language-interpreted discussion, said this coming-of-age story held a universal message: “You can do more than you think.”Douae Zine El Abidine, left, and Mae van de Loo are first-time actresses, both deaf, who play deaf teenagers in the Dutch coming-of-age feature “Okthanksbye.”Labyrint FilmFar more perilous border crossings lie at the heart of the features about immigration. “Home Is Somewhere Else,” a Mexican documentary, chronicles, in their own words, the experiences of young people with different legal statuses. Framed by the spoken-word poetry of José Eduardo Aguilar, who was himself deported from the United States, the film eschews live action in favor of vivid, varied animation.“That also was a way to protect our protagonists’ identity,” said Jorge Villalobos, who wrote and directed the film with Carlos Hagerman. (Hagerman will participate in a Q. and A. after the film’s screening on March 11.) But the men, who dealt with families on each side of the U.S.-Mexico border, also found that animation gave them freedom to employ visual metaphors and depict the world through their subjects’ eyes.“Usually, documentaries are kind of talking about how the system doesn’t work,” Hagerman said. “And we are more into experiencing how does it feel to live in these situations.”Similar struggles infuse “Totem,” Sander Burger’s fictional live-action feature from Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, which focuses on Ama (Amani-Jean Philippe), an 11-year-old whose Senegalese family lives in Rotterdam without documentation. Regarding herself as thoroughly Dutch, Ama ends up on the run and searching for her father after the authorities detain her other relatives. This high-spirited heroine gets aid from her spirit animal, a massive porcupine.The strong language in both immigration-related features hasn’t deterred the festival’s organizers, who provide parental advisories online. And families who may be reluctant to take children into theaters during a virus-filled winter can look forward to the festival’s Kid Flicks National Touring Program, which, in the summer, will begin sharing selections from some of its short-film packages — including Celebrating Black Stories and the Latin-themed ¡Hola Cine! — with museums, libraries and cinemas. (The festival also offers film-based curriculums for schools.)“We think we’ve doubled the number of programs that we send out,” Guralnick said. “And I feel like we just keep adding partners.” All share a goal, she added: “growing that next generation of filmgoers.”The New York International Children’s Film FestivalMarch 3-19; 212-349-0330; nyicff.org. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      At New York Children’s Film Festival, the Films Come First

      by

      The New York International Children’s Film Festival returns with a diverse, sophisticated slate, including Richard Linklater’s animated take on the 1969 moon landing.When Chloé Zhao won the Academy Awards for best director and best picture for “Nomadland” last year, some who felt special pride were neither her relatives nor her film industry collaborators. These delighted fans were the team behind the annual New York International Children’s Film Festival, which in 2011 showed one of Zhao’s earliest projects: “Daughters,” a 10-minute short about a 14-year-old Chinese girl being forced into an arranged marriage.The festival, whose 25th-anniversary edition begins on Friday evening at the SVA Theater in Manhattan, has long showcased filmmakers who either go on to distinguished careers or have already achieved them. This year’s opening-night titles include “Where Is Anne Frank,” a haunting animated feature about children affected by wars past and present, from the award-winning Israeli director Ari Folman (“Waltz With Bashir”). On March 19, the festival will close with “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood,” an animated examination of the 1969 moon landing by the acclaimed American filmmaker Richard Linklater (“Boyhood”), who will conduct a livestreamed Q. and A. with the audience.“We are a film festival first,” Nina Guralnick, the organization’s executive director, said in a video interview. In choosing sophisticated works, she added, “we want the program and the experience to be part of a continuum of film appreciation and film discovery, and not kind of segmented as something for kids.”This year, Guralnick and Maria-Christina Villaseñor, the festival’s programming director, are confronting the challenges of the pandemic by presenting both in-person screenings — almost all at the SVA Theater — and virtual offerings. Although the 20 features and more than 60 shorts make up a robust and global slate (this year includes the festival’s first film from Kyrgyzstan), the programmers will host fewer screenings, showing some titles in the theater only once, and others only online.“Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood” is an animated examination of the 1969 moon landing by Richard Linklater (“Boyhood”).NetflixThe streaming works, which will be available through April 3 — past the festival’s official end date — will include all those for children under 5, who are still too young to be vaccinated against Covid-19. This year, however, also gives children ages 3 to 5 a broader range of short films than in the past, as well as a feature: the Swedish director Michael Ekblad’s “Best Birthday Ever,” an animated tale about a kindergarten rabbit who must cope with a baby sister.“We really wanted to get back into the theater this year, if we could safely,” Guralnick said. And while circumstances won’t allow in-person award festivities, the festival will still feature its audience-choice and jury prizes. (It is one of the few Oscar-qualifying children’s festivals, meaning that its prizewinning shorts are eligible for Academy Award consideration.)This year, one of the programming highlights is animation, which Villaseñor described as a way to give young audiences “a different point of access” to subjects that might otherwise be too harsh.“Charlotte,” for instance, a feature by the Canadian directors Tahir Rana and Éric Warin, uses painterly animation to illuminate the life and work of Charlotte Salomon, a young German Jewish artist — voiced by Keira Knightley — who died at Auschwitz.Folman also chose intricate animation for “Where Is Anne Frank” because, he said in a phone interview, it offers “endless opportunity to do crosses between reality and imagination, between conscious and subconscious, between dreams and true stories.” Folman undertakes all of these in the film, which focuses not on Anne but on Kitty, the imaginary friend to whom Anne’s diary was addressed. Kitty emerges from the journal as a girl in contemporary Amsterdam, traveling across time to learn what happened to her friend. During her quest, she encounters refugee children who reflect Anne’s legacy.“I don’t look at it as a Holocaust movie,” Folman said. “I look at it as a coming-of-age movie.”The festival, however, does not neglect animation’s affinity for the wildly comic. In Domee Shi’s “Turning Red,” from Disney and Pixar, a 13-year-old Chinese Canadian girl transforms into a big red panda whenever she’s too excited.“Oink,” Mascha Halberstad’s stop-motion feature about a pet piglet.Viking Film/A Private ViewOther boisterous travails occur in “Oink,” the Dutch director Mascha Halberstad’s stop-motion feature about a little girl with an imperiled pet piglet. But this is no “Charlotte’s Web.” Oink, the piglet, makes an indelible mark in not always welcome ways — housebreaking is an issue — and Babs, his owner, has her hands full, especially with a visiting grandfather obsessed with a sausage-making contest. Halberstad, who will attend the festival with the producer Marleen Slot for a Q. and A. on Friday, explained in a video interview that she was aiming for a tone like that of Roald Dahl because “he doesn’t underestimate children.” Though the film ends happily, “it has a bit of an edge,” she said.The festival also offers titles that capture an interplay between art and science. “I wanted to eliminate the divide between them,” Villaseñor said, “and have people realize how vitally important the creativity in the arts is to innovating in the sciences.”“Gagarine,” for instance, a poignant, inspiring movie that was selected for the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, mingles a teenager’s passion for space exploration with his desire to have a home. The first feature from the young French directors Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh, the film was shot at the real Cité Gagarine, a housing project outside of Paris that was torn down in 2019.“We were really roommates with the demolition team,” Trouilh said as he sat next to Liatard in a video call from Paris. Their fictional protagonist, Youri (Alséni Bathily), refuses to leave, constructing for himself an elaborate kind of secret space capsule in the shadow of the wrecking ball.“Because of the empty space left by the absence of his parents,” Liatard said, “we imagine that space is the thing that is a refuge for Youri.”Alséni Bathily in “Gagarine,” about a teenager’s passion for space exploration. It was shot at a Paris housing project that was torn down in 2019.Cohen Media GroupMore technology-fueled dreams appear not only in Linklater’s “Apollo 10½,” in which another boy imagines himself lifting off, but also in the festival’s annual shorts program “Girls P.O.V.,” which this year features young female science pioneers, real and imagined. Still other budding innovators occupy the spotlight in Thomas Verrette’s documentary “Zero Gravity,” about diverse middle school students in a NASA coding competition.Such films capture the enduring principles of the festival, which was founded by Eric Beckman and Emily Shapiro, parents who in 1997 made a commitment to offering children more independent and less commercial fare.“We’ve wanted to help kids dream beyond the limitations of their own reality,” Guralnick said. Through the festival’s many iterations, she added, “we’ve been trying to be a gateway for children for 25 years to what they envision the future to be, to what they envision their world to be — should be, can be.”The New York International Children’s Film FestivalMarch 4-19; 212-349-0330; nyicff.org. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Children’s Film Festival Pushes Boundaries, Mixing Somber and Sweet

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyChildren’s Film Festival Pushes Boundaries, Mixing Somber and SweetFrom a feature just for teenagers to short movies for toddlers, this groundbreaking New York event will stream for the first time nationwide.The documentary “Curtain Up!” followed the production of “Frozen KIDS” at Public School 124 in Chinatown. This year, the festival has 14 features, seven programs of short films and more than a dozen livestreamed events.Credit… Hui Tong and Kelly NgMarch 3, 2021, 2:28 p.m. ETThe New York International Children’s Film Festival faced unusual challenges in developing a cinematic celebration during a pandemic. Now the festival, which will present its first all-streaming version from Friday through March 14, is offering its audience some unusual challenges, too.In addition to unblinking views of young people grappling with fractured families, bullying and puberty, the festival is showing what may be its most serious and mature feature yet: “Beans,” a fictionalized autobiography by the Canadian filmmaker Tracey Deer. The action unfolds during what is now known as the Oka crisis, a conflict in 1990 between the Mohawk people and the Canadian authorities over land rights.The central character, a 12-year-old Mohawk girl nicknamed Beans, played by Kiawentiio Tarbell, begins a personal rebellion that parallels her community’s uprising. Recommended for viewers 14 and older, the film includes obscene language, violence and a harrowing scene in which an older boy tries to pressure Beans into performing oral sex. It’s hardly what you expect at a children’s festival, but the organizers, who this year are delivering 14 features, seven programs of short films and more than a dozen livestreamed events — all available for the first time to families across the country — found the movie too accomplished and relevant to put aside.Kiawentiio Tarbell in “Beans,” a fictionalized autobiography by the Canadian filmmaker Tracey Deer. It is recommended for viewers 14 and over.Credit…EMA Films“It was a way to have great Indigenous storytelling, great female-led filmmaking and an extraordinary young lead actress — it was like, how can we not do this?” said Maria-Christina Villaseñor, the festival’s programming director. “It’s our responsibility to be mindful and not afraid.”Villaseñor said she felt particularly obligated after a year dominated by a public-health crisis and a racial reckoning. The initial inclination was “let’s just make it as lighthearted as possible,” she said of the festival. “But I don’t think that fully does justice to kids. Kids need time to process grief and think about loss in ways that are developmentally appropriate.”One of the most affecting evocations of a child’s experience with death is among the festival’s short films, which compete to receive prizes from an adult jury that includes the filmmakers Sofia Coppola and Peter Ramsey. Martina Lee’s “Black Boy Joy,” part of the new shorts program Celebrating Black Stories, focuses on a bereaved fictional family — a grandfather, a father and a 10-year-old autistic son — whose struggles are an affirmation of love as much as an exploration of mourning.Evan Alex in “Black Boy Joy,” part of the new shorts program Celebrating Black Stories.Credit…HBO MaxThe 24-year-old festival, however, also offers comedy, fantasy and another new shorts program, about young people who are reinterpreting their gender identity, as well as titles for audiences as young as 3. Its opening livestreamed event, on Friday evening, is a behind-the-scenes look at the new Netflix animated television series “City of Ghosts,” in which a diverse club of enterprising elementary school students investigate Los Angeles’s supernatural side. The ghosts, all friendly, are not Casper types so much as spirits that illuminate immigrant history.“My hope is that people who are looking for something more calming and intellectually stimulating will enjoy this show,” said Elizabeth Ito, the series’s creator, who will take part in Friday’s event. She said she was aiming for a tone like that of “old ‘Mister Rogers’” episodes.The festival will include a special screening of Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada’s “Raya and the Last Dragon,” a Disney movie.Credit…DisneyThe films, which will mostly be available to stream on demand throughout the festival, also include the cheerful New York City-centered documentary “Curtain Up!” Its directors, Hui Tong and Kelly Ng, visited Public School 124 in Chinatown to chronicle its production of “Frozen KIDS,” a half-hour adaptation of the Disney musical “Frozen,” for the 2019 Junior Theater Festival. The filmmakers and two of the students will take part in a discussion on March 13. Disney fans can also look forward to a special screening of Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada’s animated “Raya and the Last Dragon,” accompanied by a Q. and A., on March 12.Even the festival’s more somber films have moments of joy and triumph. Kenza (Tiara Richards), the 11-year-old protagonist of Eché Janga’s “Buladó,” a feature from the Netherlands and Curaçao, may be adrift without a mother, but she is also a car mechanic, a dead aim with a slingshot and unafraid to embrace the spiritual traditions of her enslaved ancestors. She draws on an inner strength that the heroine of “Beans” discovers as well.“Just because we’re young, it doesn’t mean that we’re powerless,” said Deer, who will discuss “Beans” online with festivalgoers on March 13. “I hope that message gets to them. And that they matter, they have a voice, and the importance of standing up for what they believe in.”“Nahuel and the Magic Book,” a feature from Brazil and Chile that will be screened in a special event.Credit…Punkrobot Animation StudioFilms like these reveal a continuing theme of children connecting to their cultural roots. Sometimes that bond is mystical, as in Germán Acuña’s animated “Nahuel and the Magic Book,” a feature from Brazil and Chile, which will be screened in a special event on Saturday. At other times it involves unearthing forgotten history, as when a teenage Canadian hockey player in Sandi Rankaduwa’s short documentary “Ice Breakers” learns about the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes.Knowing how much young moviegoers have missed being in theaters, the festival’s organizers have tried to make the experience feel authentic. Cinephiles will still vote for their favorite titles, but with digital ballots, and while the festival participants won’t meet filmmakers face to face, they will have increased opportunities for live discussions online. (Those events will be recorded for later viewing on the festival’s Facebook page.)“Every year we talk about the opportunity to explore the world, to explore ideas, to explore identity through the festival,” said Nina Guralnick, its executive director. Right now, she added, “that feels particularly poignant.”The New York International Children’s Film FestivalThrough March 14; 212-349-0330, nyicff.org.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More