The Future Belongs to the Children

Amongst the 12 movies shown, our jury had three clear favorites Bori from South Korea, Spread Your Wings from France and Phantom Owl Forest from Estonia. It was very difficult for us to appoint the winner, because all three films were terrific and each had a special value to us.

Bori tells the story of how its titular hero, an 11-year-old girl, lives happily with her deaf and dumb family.  Spread Your Wings is about how the boy Thomas moves away from the social media world and cares for newly hatched wild geese, raises them and even takes them on a small plane to give the wild geese their wings.

But our absolute No.1 favorite was the enchanting movie Magic Owl Forest from Estonia, in which 10-year-old Eia (Paula Rits) is sent by her parents to her grandfather, whom she now meets for the first time. He lives in a modest cottage in a snowy forest with a species of endangered white owls. There is also a villain who has an eye for the available lumber of then forest and wants to enrich himself. But Eia teams up with the villagers and an environmental activist and opposes him, ready to fight for justice until the end.

We chose the talented Paula Rits for her extraordinary acting accomplishments. Director Anu Aun has staged a timely, current story that tells us about family values ​​and the wonders of shared harmony, which unfortunately lost their place in today’s world and their wonder for today’s generation. The wonderful camera work, combined with great film music, were additional reason to give it our award.

Kamuran Egri
© FIPRESCI 2019
Edited by Karsten Kastelan