Anifilm for children

As in the past, this year’s ANIFILM has prepared a rich programme for children of all ages, from the youngest kids to teenagers.

The International Competition of Feature Films will feature five children’s movies. Denmark’s Jelly T tells the story of a boy who discovers that being big and strong isn’t necessarily a good thing. An inconspicuous construction worker is turned into a hero not unlike Indiana Jones in Spain’s Tad, the Lost Explorer. Meanwhile, the childhood hero of the French film Day of the Crows must confront the positive and negative sides of civilization. Also in competition are the Belgian-French co-production Zarafa about the strength of the friendship between the boy Maki and the young giraffe Zarafa, and the Czech animated film Goat Story 2. This sequel to the first Czech animated 3D film again transports us to medieval Prague.

The Focus section is dedicated to one of the main themes of this year’s ANIFILM: the very beginnings of animated film. Especially for children, the sub-section The Early Days of Czech Animation includes a block of the earliest Czech animated films for children (Wedding in the Coral Sea, A Christmas Dream, Ferda the Ant, and The Adventure of Seen-it-All). The films will be shown from their original 35mm copies.

In Animo TV, children (and adults) can look forward to two blocks of the most popular Czech animated bedtime stories (Večerníčky), as well as several newer ones. Foreign films include the series for small children The Sandpixies, made using sand animation, and the American adventure-comedy-fantasy series for teenagers, Adventure Time.

In Taking Stock, young audiences can look forward to last year’s blockbusters ParaNorman, Frankenweenie, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, Madagascar 3 and the Oscar-winning Brave. This year’s Retrospective is dedicated to Vladimír Jiránek and Břetislav Pojar. In addition to their other films, we will also recall Bojar’s unjustly overlooked feature-length combined live-action/animation film The Butterfly Time (1990), a modern fairy-tale about the adolescent Jenda and his mysterious friend Urugu – a fairy that hatched from an exotic butterfly cocoon. And in our retrospective of the films of Adolf Born children can look forward not only to their old friends Mach and Šebestová or Sophie the monkey, but also to the multiple-award-winning feature film The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Sailor of York.

In our traditional animation workshops, children can create their own animated work under the direction of ex- perienced instructors. Author and illustrator of the book The History of Europe – A Journey in Pictures Renata Fučíková will lead the workshop A Bridge Across History, where participants can help to create a cardboard castle. And this year’s Children’s Theatre Performances offer four different plays.