This year, KinoKino – International Film Festival for Children, will have its special, 5th edition as part of the 18th Zagreb Film Festival, and the festival program was presented by its coordinator Katarina Crnčić: “This year’s edition will be held online on the platform kinoeuropa.hr, and in the main competition program we will watch the most important recent movies for kids from all over the world. The award-winning films come from Germany, Austria, Sweden, Lithuania, Ireland, but also distant Australia, where the film by director John Sheedy comes from, with a meaningful title H Is for Happiness – an emotion that we all need at the moment and which we want to evoke in our young viewers. ”

From Austria comes the film Oscar & Lili, Where Nobody Knows Us directed by Arash T. Riahi; a bittersweet odyssey about the different ways we perceive the world around us in order to survive, through which we are led by brother and sister Oscar and Lili. Brotherly (and other kinds of) love is also talked about in the film Sune – Best Man by Swedish director Jon Holmberg, about a boy whose aim is to be in two places at the same time, and which sends an important message about how crucial it is to be yourself, no matter what others think. We will be showing the German film Too Far Away by director Sarah Winkenstette, which stands out with a warm story about the unexpected friendship of the young football hope Ben and Tariq, a refugee from Syria. A film representative of two countries, Lithuania and Ireland, is the film called The Castle, directed by Lina Lužytė, and it talks about the power of dreams and what we are willing to do to make them come true. Last but not least, the film whose imaginative story seems like a dream, comes from the Netherlands and was directed by Annemarie van de Mond, is called Jackie and Oopjen and takes us through Amsterdam from the perspective of little girl Jackie and her new friend Oopjen, a character from Rembrandt’s painting.

The best films will be decided on, as always, by a professional (Barbara Zupičić, Marina Andree Škop, Frano Mašković) and a children’s jury composed of five Zagreb elementary school students. As part of the accompanying program – Classics, envisaged as a space for watching older movies that are unavoidable for today’s generations as well, we will watch Train in the Snow by Mate Relja, a classic of children’s literature turned into a national film classic, because of its universal message of love and friendship that is as popular today as it was forty years ago when it was filmed. The most popular accompanying program of the festival, First Time at the Cinema, will have its online edition this year as well, under a new name – My First Online Festival. In order to fill the festival time not only with fun but also with learning, Čejen Černić, director of the successful film sequel about the adventures of the boy Koko, The Mystery of Green Hill, will hold a workshop called Second Step in Filmmaking, where she and last year’s participants of the workshop First Step in Filmmaking will continue working on the story they have chosen for further development last year. In collaboration with the Croatian Audiovisual Centre we will host an interactive panel called School Video Library in the New Normal, conceived as a joint meeting of members of the audio-visual and educational sector with the aim of articulating all key aspects of the issue of availability of quality films for children and young people and methodological materials for teachers in the online environment”.

For all information regarding buying tickets to the festival visit https://kinokino.hr/en/tickets/.