MONTOONS: short films for children
The Festival’s section dedicated to children’s shorts is back, this year in a new guise: Montoons!
Get ready for a magical cinematic adventure: all the shorts 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 a child’s eyes as well.
Discover the titles competing this year and don’t miss the chance to immerse yourself in an extraordinary journey.
Schedule of events
Thursday, July 11 - 9:15 p.m. - Fortebraccio Square
BATTERY MOM by Seungbae Jeon
Battery Mommy makes anything work: bubble guns, cameras, and thermometers. During the children’s nap on a winter day, Battery Mommy discovers that the Christmas tree in the nursery is on fire. She has to do something!
GRAPHITE by Nicola Andreallo and Alice Benedetti
In a desolate world of debris, scraps and metal components of all kinds, there lived a robot sorter…
THE TIN WOODS by Nick Boxwell
While exploring an abandoned cabin, The Tin Man finds… his original head? Based on the World of Oz books by L. Frank Baum, this stop-motion short film explores the origins of the iconic character and his transformation…
ANA MORPHOSE by Joao Rodrigues
A little girl reads to fall asleep. As she dozes off, the physical world begins to merge into an alternate reality in which the content of the book dominates the laws of physics. Ana must escape the overwhelming accumulation of printed knowledge and find her place in a world where nothing is what it seems.
RADIO INTERFERENCE by Aleksey Pochivalov
The robot Radion, who works as a radio announcer, takes a day off.
EDSON’S GRAVY by Ryan George Kittleman
Based on the poetry of Russell Edson (1935-2014), “Gravy” is a whimsical ode to a timeless condiment. Edson, considered the godfather of American prose poetry, transforms everyday events into dreamlike, offbeat fables. Director Ryan Kittleman received permission from Edson’s heirs to make “Gravy,” Edson’s first work adapted for the screen.
MOUSE HOUSE by Timon Leder
A gluttonous mouse traps himself in a wheel of cheese, while his hungry friend stuck outside must contend with the house cat.
Friday, July 12 - 9:15 p.m. - Fortebraccio Square
SPRING WALTZ by Stefano Lorenzi and Clelia Catalano
A man and a woman separated by a wall. But their love does not accept divisions, barriers, obstacles. They are a pair of street artists: freedom flows through their veins. Boundaries do not exist. The man cannot stand the “death strip” that separates him from her. And day after day, with tenacity, imagination and love, he tries to return to her arms.
CROSSWALK by Daria Volchok
The difference in the perception of time. The protagonist runs, while the crowd stands still waiting for the green light.
FUTURE MEMORIES by Donatella Altieri
Aleksander, Martin and Francis. The first two meet in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in the 1940s. The third is a pianist living in Barletta today. Yet the lives of the three men are linked by a red thread. In the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Polish singer and composer Aleksander Kulisiewicz stores 770 songs created by his fellow deportees in his memory, repeating them continuously for years under his breath between his lips so as not to forget them. Martin Rosenberg is one of the men Aleksander met at Sachsenhausen. In the camp he organized a 30-piece Jewish choir. 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 discovered that a transport would soon take him and his choir members to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Today the enormous musical heritage composed in the camps has come down to us thanks to the work of Barletta pianist Francesco Lotoro, who for more than 30 years has traveled the world in search of that music.
SOCKS FOR THE STAR by Olga Titova
Dancing in space is dangerous, but a close-knit friendship can hold you steady.
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 reimagined with handmade animation, featuring the voice of a Buryat woman who can still remember a few words of her endangered Buryat-Mongolian language.
WE ARE QUARANTINED by Anna-Maria Chernigovskaya
What were children quarantined at home doing during the Coronovirus pandemic in 2020?
Saturday, July 13 - 9:15 p.m. - Fortebraccio Square
THE WAITING by Volcher Schlecht
Karen Lips is a researcher who lives for several years in a small 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 discovers a terrible truth.
IMPOSSIBLE MALADIES by Stefano Tambellini and Alice Tambellini
Aboard their cart, Dr. Rhubarb and his assistant Cough travel from house to house to cure absurd diseases with their ingenious remedies.
VOLUPTAS by COSTANZA LUSINI
Voluptas is a short film, animated in mixed media, with the aim of telling through images The Hymn to Venus proem of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. The protagonist of the short is the goddess Venus, muse of the poet, who through the power of passion revolutionizes the world, bringing life. Her journey is accompanied by Lucretius’ words transposed into music; as she passes, storms subside, forests and fields sprout, and animals follow her struck by the power of desire.
DÒMA by Chiara Seveso
How can a small community cope with loss? Do the bereaved suffer alone? What role does society play in the ritual? Aurora, a Sardinian woman dressed in mourning, wearing a long black dress and her head covered by a handkerchief that is also black, is intent on sewing. Suddenly she pricks her finger. Here she remembers when she learned the trade of a seamstress as a child.
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