Films for children - Matinee 4 (children from 6)

While on their way to school, three children find a mysterious bone. Is it part of the skeleton of some ordinary animal? Certainly not. The children try to get some adults interested, but neither their teacher, nor their mothers, nor even a dinosaur expert is interested in their find. The bone is returned to where they found it, and the discouraged children go on their way. If only they knew what was hiding underground ... A simple, evocative story about the power and importance of a child’s imagination.

When a dark-haired boy loses his glasses, he also loses his ability to see clearly. However, the boy gains a lot more. The world becomes a tangle of sounds that become more expressive and images that lose their contours. Troshinsky’s animated film is dreamlike, full of voices, strange characters, and unusual associations. It is also a specific type of visual experiment, an optical challenge: the constantly changing sharpness hypnotizes the audience and does not allow them to relax.

This little monster, a very strange creature indeed, is different from all the other children in the school. And she is only too well aware of this. At times, she would like to cut herself off from this world that, for the other children, is familiar and ordinary but, for her, is foreign and incomprehensible. In her flickering, sometimes disturbing animation, filmmaker Stephanie Swart shows that there are often two sides to "otherness": if someone seems strange to us, we probably seem the same way to them.

Scotland in the 1940s. A young man begins working at a mine. He prepares for his shift and then goes underground. In the background, we hear reports from miners who spent their best years working in the mines only to live through their closure in the 1980s. Claire Lamond has made a beautiful tribute to the ethos of the miners – both Scottish and English – that was once so strong, and is now lost forever. This is a classic stop-motion animation, noble in its simplicity and rawness, with a surprisingly refined form.

On a sun-bathed beach, a young girl makes a little ship out of red paper and sends it out to sea on the waves. The little ship finds a huge world out there, where it admires sailboats that are huge in comparison, looks with envy at the birds, battles storm winds, and, along with the sea creatures, travels through the depths of the ocean. This is a poetic story about the fact that everyone, no matter how small and fragile, can find the courage to fulfill their biggest dreams.

In a remote corner of the forest, on a little island in the middle of a marshy pond, grows a giant mushroom, a mushroom that the Mushroom Monster could only dream of. It can have it whenever it wants to – all it has to do is make it to the island. But how is that possible with shark fins disturbing the surface of the water? With the great mushroom being too big a temptation to abandon, the Mushroom Monster thinks up various strategies. When he finally decides to act, he is surprised by the reality of the situation. This humorous film combines both computer- and hand-drawn animation.