An event that was born as a film and television festival for children and young people cannot forget the mission with which it was conceived. Enfants Terribles is back on-site with strength and its usual spirit of renewal despite being the section with the longest trajectory of the FICX. Featuring films that arrive in Spain for the first time following successful participations at festivals like Cannes, Berlinale or BAFICI, configuring a careful proposal that vindicates cinema and audiovisual discourse as indispensable tools for the education of the youngest.

The 59th Gijón/Xixón International Film Festival is committed to continue surprising and discovering tomorrow's audiences with films often remain hidden behind the mainstream premieres and that don't usually appear in commercial theaters or on platforms in a competitive section that has accumulated more than 220,000 participants since its creation. In 2020, a 100% online edition forced by circumstances, attracted students from 160 educational centers, with all available viewings completely sold-out. For this 59th edition, the FICX will carry out a combination of both models, on-site and virtual.

The Enfants Terribles competition maintains in 2021 its traditional Award for the Best Film of the section granted by the young audiences, and offers an eclectic selection of titles, in animation or real image formats and in genres such as comedy, drama or fantasy. Stories that delve into topics of interest to the new generations, such as immigration, equality or family, reflecting other cultures and ways of understanding our reality. The objective is none other than to show stories that are also catalysts for debate and empathy among the younger audience.

Selection: diversity and quality as criteria

With the aim of educating the viewer on themes such as friendship, loyalty or love, FICX programs a series of vitalist films that show, through adventure and humor, other ways of understanding the world.

This is the case of Mission Ulja Funk (Luxembourg, Germany, Poland), debut feature by German director Barbara Kronenberg, which was screened at the last Berlinale. Ulja, an empowered girl who wants to be an astronomer, stars in this entertaining adventure road movie through German, Polish and Belarusian lands, along with a court of amusing characters who row in favor of this surreal comedy..

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Also from the Berlinale comes The Ape Star (Sweden, Norway, Denmark), a film based on the novel of the same name by Frida Nilsson and directed by Linda Hambäck. The voices of Pernilla August and Stellan Skarsgård bring to life this traditional animation about unconditional love, starring Jonna, an orphan girl who is adopted by a mother gorilla.

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The intense characters of Even Mice Belong in Heaven (Czech Republic, France, Slovakia, Poland) by debutants Jan Bubenícek and Denisa Grimmová seek friendship and affection with equal passion. With a spectacular mise-en-scène combining stop motion puppetry, 3D animation and visual effects, the film demonstrates the good form of Eastern European animation through the thrilling adventure of a mouse and a fox who, after a fatal accident, end up in animal heaven.

The adventures for the youngest filmgoers continue in Moonbound (Germany), in which director and screenwriter Ali Samadi Ahadi takes on one of Germany's most popular children's books. Moonbound is the story of little Pete and his group of friends, who embark on an exciting and colorful journey to the moon to rescue his little sister, who has been kidnapped by the evil Moon Man.

FICX's teenage audience will be reflected in stories of initiation, reconciliation, growth and self-determination that characters of their age live in environments that they can discover from a different perspective.

This is the idea in Algo se enciende (Argentina) by young debutant Luciana Gentinetta, who tells the true story of the feminicide of Anahí Benítez in the south of Buenos Aires. Gentinetta seeks the healing effect of art while delving into the intimacy of the events in a work that has its European premiere in Gijón/Xixón after winning the Best Argentine Film Award at the last BAFICI.

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In Any Day Now (Finland) Hamy Ramezan draws on his own experience to tell the story of Ramin, a teenager of Iranian origin who grows up in Finnish society while his family waits for legal residency in the country. Without clinging to drama or passing judgment, Ramezan speaks of the strength of the family environment as a source of values in this exciting debut feature.

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Hugo Sobelman delves into the Stax Music Academy in Memphis to deepen its mission with Soul Kids (France), a journey through time that highlights music education as a tool for personal growth, cultural reconciliation and fraternization in the most depressed social environments. Founded on the heritage of the legendary label of the 1960s, Stax transmits to its passionate students the history of the black American community through the greatest hits of Soul.

Ronnie Sandahl, whom we discovered thanks to his debut feature Underdog, signs in Tigers (Sweden) a biopic that shows the most disturbing side of the world of soccer through the experience of Martin Bengtsson, a young talent who retired from professional competition with Inter Milan at the age of 19, leaving behind a cruel universe that he reflected in the controversial memoirs In The Shadow of the San Siro (2007).

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The world of sport is also the setting for the story of Olga (Switzerland, Ukraine, France), the debut feature by young filmmaker Elie Grappe, winner of an award at the Cannes Critics' Week. The story of a teenager who must leave her family behind in a turbulent revolutionary Ukraine to pursue her promising career as a gymnast in Switzerland, in the solitude of a high-performance center and under pressure to succeed at all costs.

The Enfants Terribles program is completed with the screening of the short films No, gracias by Guillermo Alba and Vida by Agnes Ornia, winners of the Corto&+ contest organized within the framework of support for education in values promoted by the Municipal Foundation of Social Services of the City Council of Gijón/Xixón.

Parallel Activities

The Festival's focus on the younger audience expands beyond the viewing of the films in a wide range of parallel activities.

The Q&A sessions with the filmmakers at the Enfants Terribles venues are already classics, in which not only questions about cinema are exchanged, but also about the central themes of the films, encouraging the critical sense of the new audiences of FICX.

Also, in order to expand the offer of audiovisual literacy, these meetings will be joined by various creative workshops on audiovisual themes, film posters and webseries, as well as the classic Q&A sessions with filmmakers who will explain their profession in new appointments of Los Oficios del Cine, initiatives that are added to others launched last September, as is the case of FICX Academy.

The didactic guide

One of the classics of Enfants Terribles is the didactic guide that, for decades, FICX has made available to the educational institutions participating in the screenings and that serves as a supporting tool to prepare the screening in the classroom, in addition to offering guidelines, recommendations and activities to work on after the screening. These guides, edited by the prestigious writer and critic Jesús Palacios, will be available in digital format and can be downloaded free of charge.

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