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FESTIVALS Norway

Thriller Room 213 takes the top prize at Norwegian Children’s Film Festival

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- Emelie Lindblom’s Swedish film won the highest honour in Kristiansand, while audiences preferred Anna van der Heide’s Mr Frog

Thriller Room 213 takes the top prize at Norwegian Children’s Film Festival
Room 213 by Emelie Lindblom

Swedish director Emelie Lindblom’s Room 213 received the €5,000 top prize at the Kristiansand International Children’s Film Festival, Norway’s largest showcase of movies for children and young audiences, which ended on Saturday (29 April) after screening more than 100 films during the six-day programme. 

“The film portrays friendship and group dynamics in a both moving and accurate manner – and it focuses on something that children and adolescents are strongly fascinated by: magic, the supernatural, something beyond reality,” said the jury of Lindblom’s thriller, which follows young Elvira at a summer camp, where mysterious things start to happen that cannot be explained unless you believe in ghosts.

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The Audience Award went to Dutch director Anna van der Heide’s Mr Frog, which portrays a teacher at the Ark Children’s School. He is the students’ favourite, but he has just one flaw: when you say the word kikker (“frog” in Dutch), he turns into one. The movie was named Best Dutch Family Film last year.

The ECFA (European Children’s Film Association) Award was bestowed upon Belgian director Meikeminne Clinckspoor’s Cloudboy [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, following city boy Nilas on a very different summer holiday with his mother, whom he hardly knows, in Sami country in northern Sweden. Cloudboy will now compete for Best European Children’s Film.

Danish director Jesper W Nielsen’s The Day Will Come [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
 won Best Film for Young Audiences in the Filmfest UNG competition programme. Staring Lars Mikkelsen and Sofie Gråbøl, the depiction of a boys’ home forgotten by time was earlier this year awarded six Roberts, including Best Film, by the Danish Film Academy.

Finally, Norwegian director Thea Hvistendahl’s Intruders was named Best Norwegian Short. The “dramatic story of trust and sibling love” shows sisters Lise and Synnøve playing by the river in their new neighbourhood, when two other girls show up and want to know who they are – and what they are doing on their territory.

Here is the full list of winners at the festival:

Children’s Film Prize
Room 213 – Emelie Lindblom (Sweden) 

ECFA Award
Cloudboy – Meikeminne Clinckspoor (Belgium) 

Audience Award
Mr Frog – Anna van der Heide (the Netherlands)

Best Film for Young Audiences in Filmfest UNG
The Day Will Come [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
– Jesper W Nielsen (Denmark/Sweden)

Best Norwegian Short
Intruders – Thea Hvistendahl

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