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FESTIVALS Belgium

Scandinavian films take pride of place at Anima

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This year’s Anima Festival, which kicks off in Brussels today and closes on February 20, should once again attract swathes of aficionados come to immerse themselves in cinematic worlds that are by turns fantastical, dreamlike, multi-coloured and visually pared-down. While the programme inevitably puts the emphasis on Oriental productions, it nonetheless includes a few recent European titles, in particular from the far north.

Over the past few years, Scandinavian animated films for young audiences have been quietly but surely competing with the well-oiled US machines. The features competition at Anima reflects this, for three of the nine films are Scandinavian.

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Rasmus A. Sivertsen’s Kurt Turns Evil [+see also:
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(Norway) centres on lorry driver Kurt, who is frustrated by the lack of respect society has for his profession and will do anything to climb the social ladder.

Another ugly duckling, Barry rejects the life mapped out for him as a poor earthworm. His dream is to become a disco star! This is the enticing plot outline for Thomas Borch Nielsen’s Sunshine Barry & the Disco Worms [+see also:
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(Denmark/Germany).

Meanwhile, aimed at slightly older audiences, Craig Frank, Thorbjorn Christoffersen and Kresten Vestbjerg’s Journey To Saturn is a zany comedy about the first flight to Saturn financed by the Danish Space Agency. The directorial trio and Danish studio A Film were also behind Terkel in Trouble [+see also:
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, Danish box office champion of 2005.

This frenzy of Scandinavian activity will also be on show in the “carte blanche” given to the Swedish Film Institute.

Anima will also give Belgian viewers the chance to (re)discover five of the 29 European contenders for the Cartoon d’Or (the winner of which was young Irish director David O’Reilly’s Please Say Something). Moreover, the festival will host a retrospective of Greek animated films from 1945 to the present day; and catch-up screenings of the best animated hits of the last six months (including Bob & Bobette, A Town Called Panic [+see also:
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interview: Stéphane Aubier and Vincen…
interview: Stéphane Aubier & Vincent P…
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and Round Da Way [+see also:
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).

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(Translated from French)

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