Films for the Youngest Audiences at Schlingel

German film critic Reinhard Kleber explores how the 31st Schlingel International Film Festival in Chemnitz caters to its youngest audiences, highlighting four animated and live-action films that combine accessible storytelling with friendship, adventure, empathy and discovery.

By Reinhard Kleber

How do you introduce young children to the cinema? The best way is to show them age-appropriate films. But it’s not that simple. Many people who run or programme children’s cinemas have long been saying that too few films are being made that suit the needs and abilities of the youngest audience members. So it’s all the better when suitable productions do emerge from time to time. At the 31st Schlingel Festival for Children and Young Audiences this October, there was a whole series of films on show recommended for cinema-goers aged five or six and above.

The German puppet film The Rainbow Fish (Der Regenbogenfisch), which premiered in Chemnitz and went on to win two awards – the European Children’s Film Association (ECFA) Prize and the Audience Award – proved to be a hit with the audience. This fifth feature-length film production by the legendary Augsburger Puppenkiste is based on the book series by Marcus Pfister, which was launched in 1992. Director Florian Moch and his team of puppeteers tell the story of the vain Rainbow Fish, who is particularly proud of his shimmering scales. Instead of playing with the other little sea creatures, he spends all his time preening his scales and ends up isolating himself. When he loses a scale one day, he has to dive into the deep sea to find it again. He only reluctantly allows the little blue fish to accompany him. On their journey together, the pair have all sorts of adventures and encounter strange creatures such as the boastful Humbrecht fish or the Grumble-Creep fish.

For this German-Swiss co-production, the producers were able to secure a number of prominent actors, including Jannik Schümann, Luna Wedler, Bjarne Mädel, Oliver Kalkofe and Andrea Sawatzki, who lend their voices to the inhabitants of the underwater world. The quirky characters, the backdrops of the colourful reef, the lively musical interludes by Helmut Zerlett and the constant splashing and gurgling of the water make you quickly forget the strings of the hand-operated puppets, so that you are soon immersed in the toddler-friendly, episodic narrative style of the analogue hero’s journey. At just 67 minutes, the film is also well-suited to the attention spans of the youngest cinema-goers.

A child’s journey of discovery in the jungle

Latvian director Edmunds Jansons presented yet another animated adventure for young cinema-goers aged six and over with Born in the Jungle (Tajemstvi džungle), a co-production with Poland and the Czech Republic. The screenplay is loosely based on the accounts of the Latvian explorer and adventurer Aleksandars Laime, who lived as a hermit in the Venezuelan wilderness from 1942 to 1994 and, amongst other things, tracked down the world’s highest waterfall in the mountains. The story centres on nine-year-old Elisabeth, who attends school in the capital, Caracas, but returns to Orchid Island in the jungle during the summer holidays, where her parents and her brother Leo, aged around three, live. When her parents suddenly have to go into town for a doctor’s appointment, she is left to look after her little brother Leo, who, however, disappears without a trace whilst playing. In her search, she ventures deep into the jungle and must not only rescue her brother, but also free a magical, fluffy, furry creature from the clutches of poachers and return it to the Tepui table mountain.

The film captivates with its gripping, easy-to-follow story, fantastic characters, colourful illustrations and varied soundtrack. The elegant combination of cut-out animation and computer animation, together with the colourful illustrations, creates a cheerful atmosphere that suggests that, despite all the adventures and dangers, everything will turn out all right in the end. It is particularly lovely to see how Zizi learns to take responsibility without the director having to resort to a didactic tone.

Live-action films for pre-schoolers and other young children are generally even rarer than animated films. Just how difficult the production conditions are can be seen from the fact that the experienced German children’s film specialist Bernd Sahling took around ten years to finally bring his labour of love, Koschka (Koschka), to fruition. And this is actually a film about a cat! Over the course of 75 minutes, it tells the story of how an eight-year-old boy named Jan is approached by a tabby cat. He names the cat Koschka because she seems to respond to that name. Despite notices being put up, no owner comes forward. When Koschka gives birth to three kittens in the cupboard, Jan looks after them with his friend Sami and his classmate Sami. Jan even decides not to go on holiday with his mother, who lives apart from his father. But then a doctor diagnoses Jan with an allergy to cat hair. Koschka and her kittens definitely can’t stay in the flat any longer. Will they end up in the animal shelter?

You can tell from the leisurely pace of the production that the director loves cats, even though he himself suffers from a mild allergy to their fur. The simple story is fairly straightforward, but it is staged with great care and is suitable for young audiences. Sahling has even woven a humanitarian message into the subtext of this charming story about friendships between animals and humans. As it turns out later, Jan also speaks Russian; his mother immigrated from Russia with him. In this respect, Koschka and Jan share, in a way, the fate of being refugees.

The Indian family film The Sledge, which held its premiere in Chemnitz, is aimed at a slightly older target audience—the festival recommends it for ages eight and up. The 75-minute film by Raja Shabir Mohammad Khan—who completed his studies in directing and screenwriting at the Satyajit Ray Film and TV Institute in 2007 and has since worked as a director, cinematographer, screenwriter, and producer—follows the adventures of twelve-year-old Haziq and his two sisters in the snow-covered Kashmir region of India. In their small mountain village, their father earns a living during the winter by transporting tourists across the snow near a ski slope using his well-worn sledge. When the children take the sledge out for a ride without his knowledge, it breaks. To pay for the repairs, the three children begin selling kahwa tea to the winter visitors. When a wealthy couple leaves behind a backpack full of money and chocolate, Haziq sets out to track down the owners, sparking an adventurous odyssey.

The director and writer produced this heartwarming, low-budget film almost entirely with the help of his own family members. He brought several of them along to Chemnitz, where they performed on traditional Indian instruments before the screenings and served kahwa to the young audience members afterward. While the screenplay contains a few gaps in plausibility, it succeeds by offering a compelling protagonist with whom the audience can easily identify—one who brings the emotional tension between crushing poverty and the pursuit of integrity to life. Beyond the protagonist’s arduous hero’s journey—which entails overcoming a variety of trials—the straightforward approach to the film’s presentation offers valuable insights into the difficult living conditions in a region of the world from which moving images rarely reach Western Europe.

Reinhard Kleber
© FIPRESCI 2026