27/04/2015 - The 18th Kristiansand International Children’s Film Festival – Norway’s largest, which ended yesterday – crowned winners from Argentina, Ireland, Denmark and Sweden

Tomm Moore's Song of the Sea won the European Children’s Film Association’s prize

Argentinian director Juan Pablo Buscarini’s The Games Maker won the top prize from Norwegian Film Association Film & Kino at the 18th Kristiansand International Children’s Film Festival, which ended on Sunday (26 April).

Having already received three prizes from the Argentinian Film Academy, the film follows young Ivan Drago, who, thanks to his newfound love of board games, becomes involved in the world of game invention. He is pitted against the inventor Morodian, who has long desired to destroy the city of Zyl, founded by Ivan's grandfather. The prize, which comes with €9,000 worth of support for Norwegian distribution, was decided on by the jury comprising Norwegian critic Cathrine Sordal, screenwriter Arild Tryggestad and Film & Kino senior advisor Erik Zmuda.

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Irish director Tomm Moore’s Oscar-nominated, fully animated Song of the Sea [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tomm Moore
film profile], Danish director Ask Hasselbalch’s Antboy: Revenge of the Red Fury [+see also:
trailer
film profile], and Swedish directors Per Gavatin and Andreas Öhman’s Remake [+see also:
trailer
film profile] were also awarded at Norway’s largest children’s film festival, for which festival director Danckert Monrad-Krohn had prepared a programme of 85 films hailing from 22 countries.

The European Children’s Film Association’s prize went to Song of the Sea, which the jury comprising Aneta Ozorek (Poland), Bregt Van Wijnendaele (Belgium) and Stig Andresen (Norway) accordingly named Europe’s Best Children’s Film. Moore tells the story of Saoirse, the daughter of one of the last selkies – women who, in Irish and Scottish legends, transform from seals into people.

The Audience Award from the Kristiansand Zoo and Amusement Park was given to Antboy: Revenge of the Red Fury, the second film about the now 12-year-old superhero Pelle, who was bitten by a mutant ant and given powers out of all proportion to his size. The Eva Jakobsen production for Nimbus Film was launched in competition at the Berlinale and later collected the Danish film critics’ Robert for Best Film, Children and Youth Audiences.

A Youth Jury of nine pupils at the Tangen School chose Per Gavatin and Andreas Öhman’s Remake as the winner of the Film Fest Young section of the festival. The movie is about a young woman named Lisa, whose life is a movie – she captures everything on video, every step, every person she meets. Her boyfriend Martin has learned to cope with it, but during their holiday in New York, it gets out of hand.