MONTOONS: short films for children

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The Festival’s section dedicated to children’s short films is back. This year it has a new guise: Montoons!

Get ready to experience a magical cinematic adventure: all the short films are unique and original stories that will enchant the little ones and be able to make adults relive the wonder of seeing the world through the eyes of a child.

Discover the titles in this year’s competition and don’t miss the chance to immerse yourself in an extraordinary journey.

Thursday, July 11 – 9:15 p.m. – Piazza Fortebraccio

BATTERY MOMMY by Seungbae Jeon

Battery Mommy works at various stuffs such as soap bubble guns, cameras, and thermometers in the nursery. During the children’s nap time of one winter day, Battery Mommy finds out the Christmas tree in the nursery is on fire. At the moment, she urgently runs to the fire alarm to safely rescue sleeping children…

GRAPHITE by Nicola Andreallo and Alice Benedetti

In a desolate world, composed of debris, scraps, and metal components of every kind, lived a sorting robot…

THE TIN WOODS by Nick Boxwell

While exploring an abandoned cabin, the Tin Woodman finds…his original head? Based on the original Oz books by L. Frank Baum, this short stop-motion film explores the origins of the Tin Woodman and how he came to be made of tin.

ANA MORPHOSE by Joao Rodrigues

A little girl reads herself to sleep. As she dozes off, the physical world starts melting into an alternate reality where the contents of a book rule over the laws of physics. Ana has to escape being swallowed by the overwhelming accumulation of printed knowledge and find her own space in a world where nothing is what it seems.

RADIO INTERFERENCE by Aleksey Pochivalov

The robot Radion, who works as a radio announcer, is taking a day off.

EDSON’S GRAVY by Ryan George Kittleman

Based on Russell Edson’s (1935-2014)  poem, “Gravy” is a whimsical ode to a timeless condiment. Edson is widely considered the godfather of prose poetry in the United States. Edson’s work turns everyday events into dreamy offbeat fables. Filmmaker Ryan Kittleman received permission from Edson’s estate to produce “Gravy”, marking the first time Edson’s work has been adapted for the big screen.

MOUSE HOUSE by Timon Leder

A gluttonous mouse traps himself in a cheese wheel while his starving friend stranded outside must contend with a hungry cat.

Friday, July 12 – 9:15 p.m. – Piazza Fortebraccio

SPRING WALTZ by Stefano Lorenzi and Clelia Catalano

A man and a woman separated by a wall. However, their love doesn’t accept divisions, barriers, obstacles. They are a couple of street artists: freedom runs in their veins. Borders don’t exist. The man can’t tolerate the “death strip” that separates him from her. And day after day, with tenacity, imagination, love, he tries to return to her arms.

CROSSWALK by Daria Volchok

The story of the difference in the perception of time. The main character is rushing forward while the crowd is frozen waiting for the green traffic light.

FUTURE MEMORIES by Donatella Altieri

Aleksander, Martin and Francesco. The first two meet in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in the 1940s. The third is a pianist who lives today in Barletta. Yet the lives of the three men are linked by a common thread that has kept them together. In the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, the Polish singer and composer Aleksander Kulisiewicz stores in his memory 770 songs created by his fellow deportees, repeating them continuously for years in a whisper between his lips so as not to forget them. Martin Rosenberg is one of the men Aleksander met in Sachsenhausen. In the camp he organized a Jewish choir of 30 members. For Martin the choir was an important vehicle for opposing the regime. The choir was illegal and its rehearsals strictly clandestine. In late 1942, Martin learned that a transport would soon take him and his choir members to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Today the enormous musical heritage composed in the campii has come down to us thanks to the work of the pianist from Barletta Francesco Lotoro, who for over thirty years traveled the world alone in search of all that music

 

SOCKS FOR THE STAR by Olga Titova

Dancing in cold space is dangerous, but close-knit friendship will keep you strong.

THE СHRISTMAS TREE SCHOOL by Anastasia Makhlina

Cactus works as a janitor at the Christmas tree school. He watches their training and dreams of becoming the main symbol of the holiday himself.

BAIGAL NUUR – LAKE BAIKAL by Alisi Telengut

The formation and history of Lake Baikal in Siberia are re-imagined with hand-made animation, featuring the voice of a Buryat woman who can still recall some words in her endangered Buryat-Mongolian language.

 

WE ARE QUARANTINED by Anna-Maria Chernigovskaya

Documentary animation about children staying quarantined at home during Coronovirus pandemic in 2020.

 

Saturday, July 13 – 9:15 p.m. – Piazza Fortebraccio

THE WAITING by Volcher Schlecht

Karen Lips is researcher and lives for several years in a tiny little shack in Costa Rica to observe frogs. When she leaves the cloud forest for a short time and returns, the frogs are gone. All of them. Karen sets out to find them – and encounters a horrible truth.

IMPOSSIBLE MALADIES by Stefano Tambellini and Alice Tambellini

Aboard their cart, Doctor Rabarbaro and his assistant Tosse travel from house to house to cure absurd illnesses with their ingenious remedies.

VOLUPTAS by COSTANZA LUSINI

Voluptas is a short animated film, created in mixed technique, that intends to tell through images the Hymn to Venus introduction of the De Rerum Natura written by Lucretius. The main character of this short film is Venus, the poet’s muse, who, through the strength of passion, transforms the world around her, bringing life. The words of Lucretius, transposed in music, accompany her path. At her passage, storms calm down, forests and fields sprout, and animals follow her draw by the strength of desire.

DÒMA by Chiara Seveso

How does a small community deal with a loss? Is the person who loses someone close the only one to suffer? What role does society play in the ritual? Aurora, a sardinian woman dressed in mourning, in a long black dress, as well as a black veil covering her head, intent on sewing. Suddenly, she absently pricks her finger with a needle. This makes her recall how she was taught to sew when she was little.