60th Zlín Film Festival

International Film Festival for Children and Youth
04.09.2020 to 10.09.2020
Zlín

Fireworks at the festival opening (© Theresia Merz)

The 60th International Film Festival for Children and Young People, which is regularly scheduled for the end of May, has been postponed to September and took place live. The three-member ecumenical jury also worked on site. It awarded its prize to a film from the International Competition for Children's Films and the International Competition for Films for Youth, each of which contained 7 entries.

Link: Festival homepage

Awards

Into the Beat
Directed by:
2020

Katya, outstanding ballet talent, prepares to enter a famous New York Ballet Academy when she gets fascinated by hip-hop, music and dance. Not without opposition of her father, she follows her new dream. 

The Ecumenical Jury appreciates the value of freedom of personal choices made in continuity with tradition, the dance and the music considered an expression of the absolute beauty, the value of the family relations, and the importance of intercultural and intergenerational dialogue in the modern Western society. 

Directed by:
2019

The life of teenager Rocks and her younger brother Emmanuel is radically altered when their mother disappears. The girl is unable to find any help from her schoolmates and is afraid of separation from her brother. 

The Ecumenical Jury gives a Commendation to the film realized in a documentary style, without an easy happy ending, showing the struggling of Rocks to save her family and to live her life with Emmanuel. In a multiethnic London society, a dialogue between generations and cultures becomes necessary to assure a better future of the less privileged.