Generation

Die Kinder vom Napf (The Children from the Napf), the Kplus opening film, depicts a very isolated culture, doesn’t it?

FW: Yes, the director calls the region around the Napf the “Wild West” of Lucerne. Her documentary portrays 50 children growing up on mountain farms. She follows them on their way to school, which they can only reach with a cable car. A gentle undertone of the film is the question of whether this isolated existence has a future. What is it like to live with the knowledge that your home can offer you a wonderful, in its own way, exotic childhood idyll, but cannot be the place that you can live for your whole life? Early in the film, the children ask: What can we do to make the village more known in the world? In its own way, the film is an answer to that question.

The discovery of sexuality

A further theme in this year’s programme seems to be sexuality...

FW: Yes, but that’s not unusual. The discovery of one’s own sexuality is a central part of growing up. The films in the programme don’t scandalize or dramatize anything. In the aforementioned Un mundo secreto, sexual emancipation is a crucial moment in the protagonist’s self-realization. In order to assert herself, she has to find her own way of dealing with sexuality. Joven & Alocada (Young & Wild) by the Chilean filmmaker Marialy Rivas (14plus) introduces us to a character who uses sexuality as a weapon to free herself from her strict, evangelical family. Beyond this conflict, she develops an imaginative, inquiring way of bringing totally different generations together.

MR: Young people want to experiment, test their boundaries, and that’s a passionate, hormone-driven learning process. The sexual always is a sign to society, religion, the strictness of one’s upbringing, the parents: I rebel, cross the boundaries of what is allowed. And some films are as hormone-driven as the characters themselves, like the musical Magi I luften (Love is in the Air).
FW: Exactly, Magi I Luften by Simon Staho in 14plus, is a touch too loud, too colourful and too extreme. As a film that is so young in formal terms, it might tread a little too close for comfort in the eyes of some adults – that’s its truly special quality!
MR: Cultures treat sexuality very differently. The Turkish film Lal Gece (Night of Silence) in 14plus addresses sexuality in the context of traditional rules and rites. The director Reis Çelik depicts the wedding night of a 14-year-old girl and a much older man. It is a forced marriage, which has been arranged by the fundamentalist community they live in. What is special is that the film not only shows the suffering of the girl, but also the pressure burdening the man. In Lal Gece, sexuality is only suggested and comes across as a threat. The next day, the man must prove that the newlywed couple has slept together and that she was a virgin. The girl uses every means at her disposal to delay the act.

Beyond the quality of the film in question, are there themes or types of representation that you categorically exclude?

MR: Few themes are taboo in the selection process. Basically, we look at the films we like and ask ourselves which age group they are suitable for. Within a competition - Kplus and 14plus - the spectrum is vast and the age recommendations are therefore very specific to the film. For example, we would never confront very young children with the Bolivian film Pacha by Hector Ferreiro (Kplus), because the visual language and the topic are too complex. We ask our viewers to take our recommendations very seriously. This also applies to 14plus – in which this year our age recommendation for two films is 16 for the first time.