23rd KIFF: Cinema for children and adults

This year’s festival includes three out-of-the-box children who are not exactly like the children we conceive of but react to the environment they live in and therefore, their childhood is not as it normally should be.

These are Iceland’s Swan (2017) directed by Asa Helga Hjorleifstdottir, the French film Son of Sofia (2017) directed by Elina Psykou and Ishu from India directed by Utpal Borpujari.

Swan is a fascinating film featuring the nine-year-old Olga who is packed off by her parents to an elderly couple to learn to work as a farmhand as a ‘reformatory’ process because she was caught thieving. The delivery of a calf she helps in, becomes a life-changing incident for her. The film is filled with her surrealistic dreams that give us a different perspective of childhood that finds peace and joy in Nature.

Son of Sofia is a French film rooted in Greece in a strange family where the husband is Greek but his wife is Russian. Misha is this woman’s son from an earlier marriage who is brought to Greece by his mother. Misha hardly talks but allows his eyes, his silence, his body language to do the talking. The film spills over with metaphors drawn from fairy tales that the little boy internalises and constantly dreams about. The film is set against the summer of 2004, as the Summer Olympics pervade all casual conversations and the ever-popular winning song of the Eurovision Song Contest plays in the background.

Ishu in Assamese marks the debut of Utpal Borpujari, a National Award-winning journalist. Ishu is a big screen adaptation of Manikuntala Bhattacharjya’s children’s novel of the same name. The film reflects the rural ambience of western Assam in its truest sense, and it will instantly take the viewer to a world of a kid whose innocent and happy-go-lucky world turns topsy turvy thanks to the superstitious society of adults around him.

The Children’s Screening section covers three Indian films. These are – Pinti Ka Sabun (Hindi) directed by Pramod Pathak, Putani Safari directed by Ravindra Venshi and Swanam (Malayalam) directed by Dipesh T. Swanam spins a contemporary tale of the bonding between two school boys one of who is blind while the other one has normal vision. The two begin by being at loggerheads but as time moves on, they move towards a harmonious end that only children can make possible.

Putani Safari is also about friendship that evolves between two boys, one of who is a tribal boy and the other is from the village nearby. Trapped in a forest for 36 hours, they finally make their way to safety. Pinti Ka Sabun revolves around a pahadi boy, who wins a bar of luxury soap at the village fair which reminds him of Pinti, an army officer's daughter he used to play with. As the soap begin to melt and shrink, the boy feels that his world too is crumbling.

The sole entry from China this year is Ballad from Tibet. It is the story of 4 visually impaired kids from Tibet who want to compete in a singing contest in a city on the southeast coast of China and covers their trials and tribulations to get there.  Inspired by true people and real events in 2010, it is a charming film with beautiful Tibetan folk music.

Most of these films raise questions about the adult world’s understanding and mistaken perceptions about the needs, desires and problems of children.

Happy Children’s Day.