S Viswanath

Children and young adults/youth – boys and girls – navigating and transcending life’s issues impacting their quintessential lives majorly dominated films and filmmakers narrative concerns featured at 56th IFFI fiesta.

The fractured, strife stricken, filial and societal challenging concerns of adult world saw kids navigating these grown-up issues. Not just as innocent observers. Or representing microcosms of societal turmoil. But coming to terms with the harsh realities. Facing trials and tribulations that came at them like fusillade of bullets with equipoise and maturity beyond years.

Wars, civil society conflicts, immigration, socio-economic situations, traditional practices and the like. Films after films saw its makers bring onto screen scourge of society where children and youths are thrown into tsunami of action. Deftly and delicately showcasing how they resolved the trying situations they found themselves in.

Indeed, diverse plotlines provided a perspective peek into problems and challenges holding a mirror to larger society’s multifarious conflicts being witnessed world over. Each explored how children and youth, sojourned through the new world order. Symbolising and allegorising how next generation took these head on to broker better future for themselves while uncertainty pervaded their milieu.

In noted German director Fatih Akin’s AMRUM a 12-year-old tries to reconcile his mother’s fanatical Fuhrer loyalty with emerging world order around him. In an evocatively narrated story the film speaks of trauma and tragedy of the Nazi past.

In THE ODYSSEY OF JOY from Kosovo by Zgjim Terziqi the roadie has 12-year-old boy, with father missing from Kosovo War, joining a peace-keeping circus troupe as they perform to children afflicted by the ravages of war.

In Nigeria’s Akinola Davies Jr’s MY FATHERS SHADOW as the title suggests you have two young lads thrown into the thick of political and civil unrest as their father’s past comes hurtling towards them.

Then THE PRESIDENT’S CAKE from Iraq by Hasan Hadi winner of Camera d’Or at Cannes Film Festival 2025, a poignant and political tale set in Iraq of 1990s speaks of a nine-year-old who embarks on an Herculean errand to bake a birthday cake for country’s President.

Magical, mystical and in magical realism mode Japan’s SEASIDE SERENDIPITY by Satoko Yokohama winner of Special Mention in Generation Kplus Section at Berlin International Film Festival 2025, has a set of young students bustling with energy and activity as it tracks the hustle and bustle habitat the seaside town wherein flock of artists arrive. The film is cinematic Haiku as it vividly captures the sunshine summer for one and all, especially young ones.

THE MESSAGE from Argentina, which took the coveted Silver Bear Jury Prize at Berlin International Film Festival 2025 by Iván Fund speaks of the exploitation of a clairvoyant child who can read the mind of animals about their human masters and how the soothsayer girl child consoles the troubled adults by her animal reading.

WOMAN AND CHILD from Iran’s Saeed Roustaee is a touching depiction of a single, nurse mother who does her best to balance her work and her son’s care that tests her to the tether in the aftermath of a tragic loss thereafter.

Likewise, Hungarian flick ORPHAN by Lazslo Nemes sees Jewish lad’s world, with idolised ideas of his deceased father provided by his mother is upended when a man claiming to be his real dad appears.

Comical, yet profound in its philosophy and social posturing and told through the eyes of the young and precocious southpaw girl child, the Taiwanese fare LEFT HANDED GIRL by Shih-Ching Tsou, winner of Gan Foundation Award at BFI London Film Festival 2025, is an evocative piece of cinema about a single mother fending for her family of two daughters navigating challenges of the new environment and striving keep them united.

At a peripheral level, A POET, remarkable Columbian film by Simón Mesa Soto which won the Jury Prize under Un Certain Regard Section at Cannes Film Festival 2025 as also Horizons Award at San Sebastian International Film Festival 2025 may seem to be about a man poet who has lost his mojo. But deep diving into its subtext one can see how the teen girl he takes to groom as poet and his trying to make it up with his estranged daughter also speaks of how the two girls own personal journeys as well.

The Slovenian LITTLE TROUBLE GIRLS winner of FIPRESCI Prize under Perspectives at Berlin International Film Festival 2025and Best Cinematography Prize at Tribeca Film Festival 2025 by Urška Djukic, is an intuitive and inventive coming of age drama as the girls in the first flush of their adulthood while on a weekend rehearsals camp with a school choir at a convent, evaluate their own inner desires and views of the world outside.

Winner of Special Mention, Junior Jury Award and Golden Leopard at Locarno International Film Festival 2025 MOSQUITOES by sister duo Valentina Bertani-Nicole Bertani evaluates the adult world through a rebellious trio girl gang who embrace their youth, sexual preferences and individual freedom cocking a snook at the world around them.

RENOIR by Chie Hayakawa from Japan set in Suburban Tokyo of 1987 highlights the whimsy world of a 11-year-old fascinated by telepathy drifts into her own fantasy world even as her working mother battles between fending for her child and her terminal ill husband.

THE VISUAL FEMINIST MANIFESTO came be described a Syrian visual cinematic essay by Farida Baqi which bagged the Youth Jury Award, IFFR 2025, as to how the life of a woman pans out from birth to adulthood in an otherwise oppressive constrictive patriarchal Arab society.

KARLA by Germany’s Christina Tournatzés who won the Best Director and Best Screenwriter at Munich Film Festival 2025, set in Munich in 1962, brings to screen the real life story of a young teen who files incest abuse charges against her father while seeking protection from State and judiciary from him.

MY DAUGHTER’S HAIR AKA RAHA from Iran by Hesam Farahmand which won Best Film, Alice nella Città Film Festival 2025 speaks of trials and tribulations of a teenage girl studying animation, who is forced to snip her hair and sell it to buy a second-hand laptop bringing with it attendant problems for the family.

THE DEVIL SMOKES (AND SAVES THE BURNT MATCHES IN THE SAME BOX) Mexican film which won the Best First Feature Award, Berlinale 2025 by Ernesto Martínez Bucio charts the angst and anxiety of five stoic abandoned young siblings living with their schizophrenic grandmother whose life blurs the boundary between reality and imagination.

Winner of prestigious Golden Bear, and FIPRESCI Prize at Berlin International Film Festival 2025 DREAMS (SEX LOVE) by Dag Johan Haugerud is about how a young teen’s adolescent and infatuous feelings of her teacher which she documents in her dairy and whose discovery shocks people around her but believe there is more in the child’s writing talent.

SOUND OF FALLING by Germany’s Mascha Schilinski which won the Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival 2025 spotlights on four young girls spending their youth at the farm in northern Germany and how over the course of a century brings the past in perspective and their lives begin to mirror each other despite time spans.

Spanish film SLEEPLESS CITY winner of SACD Award at Cannes Film Festival 2025 by Guillermo Galoe has 15-year-old boy, resident of Europe’s largest illegal settlement, belonging to family of scrap dealers, confronting whether to stay put or move away to city as demolitions of their slum threatens the family with displacement.

Algerian film THE LITTLE SISTER French fare by Hafsia Herzi which fetched Best Performance by an Actress – Queer Palm at Cannes Film Festival 2025 for its principle protagonist showcases how grapples with her sexual orientations in an otherwise conservative Algerian society and her household as she experiences freedom of choice in distant Paris which opens up a whole new world for her.

Winner of Special Jury Prize CINÉ+ at Locarno Film Festival 2025 the Italian SWEETHEART by Margherita Spampinato is another endearing and enchanting tale which draws us into the world of a
lively, grumpy and impertinent child who is whisked away from the modern, technological and hyper-connected world, to spend the summer in Sicily, with his elderly aunt, the very antithesis of it all – religious and grumpy living all alone, in an ancient palace full of legends and superstitions.

Among other honourable mentions and films that coveted the discerning cinephiles’ critical eyes were Blue Heron by Canadian-Hungarian director Sophy Romvari, which won the Swatch First Feature Award; Special Mention: Junior Jury Award – Filmmakers Of The Present at Locarno International Film Festival 2025.

Reedland from Netherlands by Sven Bresser, Living The Land from China by Huo Meng who won the Best Director Award at Berlin Film Festival 2025, which details the country’s socio-economic transformation affecting peasant farmers families through the eyes of a ten-year-old as migration to city becomes the norm.

The Beetle Project by Korea’s Jin Kwang-kyo charmingly charts the journey of South Korean girl who chances upon a plastic bag with a beetle a summer vacation homework of a North Korean boy and how she overcomes tries to transcend the relationship between North and South to reach out to the boy on the other side.

Egypt’s Happy Birthday by Sarah Goher winner of Best International Narrative Feature; Best Screenplay; and Nora Ephron Award at Tribeca Film Festival 2025, speaks of harsh reality of social hierarchy through eight-year-old girl, a maid for a wealthy family in Cairo, who plans a befitting birthday party for their daughter.

The other films merit mention include A Summer in Boujad Moroccan film by Omar Mouldouira, Pasa Faho the Oz film by Kalu Oji, Taiwanese film Girl by Shu Qi, Skin Of Youth the Vietnamese film by Ashleigh Mayfair which won the IFFI Golden Peacock, Estonia’s Fränk by Tõnis Pill, Brides by UK’s Nadia Fall, K Poper by Iran’s Ebrahim Amini, winner of The Award of the Best Film Script, The Golden Butterfly for the Best Actor and the Special Award of the Jury, Chilean film The Wave by Sebastián Lelio, Becoming from Kazakhstan by Zhannat Alshanova, Silent Rebellion by Switzerland’s Marie-Elsa Sgualdo, The Ivy from Ecuador by Ana Cristina Barragán, Ready Or Not from Ireland by Claire Frances Byrne, Furu from Mali by Fatou Cissé, Singapore’s Amoeba by Siyou Tan which bagged Fei Mu Award for Best Actress, Youth Jury Award, Cinephilia Critics’ Award, at Pingyao International Film Festival 2025, and Sudan’s Cotton Queen by Suzannah Mirghani.

S VISWANATH is a veteran film critic who officiates as JURY at several National & International Film Festivals. He deputises as CHIEF CINEMA CURATOR/PROGRAMMER & CREATIVE ADVISOR for Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes). He also curates & advises on the selection of shorts & documentaries for Bengaluru International Short Film Festival (BISFF). Mr Viswanath is the author of “RANDOM REFLECTIONS: A Kaleidoscopic Musings on Kannada Cinema”.