Young Horizons IFF, the largest Polish film festival dedicated to films and series for young audiences, will take place this year from September 26 to October 5 in Warsaw, Wrocław, and 18 other cities and online. The event also includes the Young Horizons Industry platform, offering a diverse program for film professionals. The 12th edition of the event will once again feature Slovak films and filmmakers.
The festival programme includes five Slovak co-production feature films. In the Discoveries competition, the animated film Tales from the Magic Garden (dir. David Súkup, Patrik Pašš, Leon Vidmar, Jean-Claude Rozec), which had its world premiere at this year’s Berlinale, will have its Polish premiere. The Festival Favorites section will screen two Slovak films from last year’s Young Horizons main competition – Diplodocus by Wojtek Wawszczyk, also shown in an extended director’s cut, and the puppet animation Living Large (dir. Kristina Dufková), which premiered in Annecy. The Intergenerational Stories section will present the film How I Learned to Fly, about the summer adventures of 12-year-old Sofia, produced in a Serbian-Croatian-Bulgarian-Slovak co-production. The film Even Mice Belong in Heaven (dir. Denisa Grimmová, Jan Bubeníček) also returns to the program for the third time, once again included in the Our Classics section.
Slovakia will also be represented in the Young Horizons Industry co-production forum (September 29 – October 1), with several Slovak films and professionals taking part. In the Market Presentations, and within this year’s focus on Croatia, two upcoming co-production projects will be showcased – the animated family film The Crystal Planet, a Czech-Croatian-Slovak co-production (SK prod: BFilm) and the feature film Spacehead, directed by Marina Andree Škop, produced as a broad Croatian-Slovak-Slovenian-Latvian-Serbian co-production (SK prod: objectif). Among the eleven projects in the Project Pool, a section that allows projects in various stages of development to arrange individual meetings with potential partners, the Czech-Norwegian-Slovak project Finding Home will be personally presented by its producer Lukáš Hanulák (Raketa production company).
Zuzana Bieliková (Slovak Film Agency) will join the discussion panel Think Tank Film Institutes – Thinking Ahead: Spotlight on Young Audience Content, where representatives of film funds will exchange experiences and strategies regarding innovative funding models focused on youth content. The panel will take place on October 1 alongside the co-production forum.
The industry programme also includes the mentoring and networking initiative Producers LINK (September 28 – October 1), designed for producers starting out in children’s film production. The program connects two major industry events – Young Horizons Industry in Warsaw and Cinekid for Professionals in Amsterdam. During these events, producers have the opportunity to attend workshops, project presentations, and discussions aimed at supporting the creation of high-quality content for young audiences. Slovak producer Radka Machalová (Bright Sight Pictures) will take part in the fifth edition of Producers LINK, which is supported by the Slovak Film Institute.
More information at:
festiwal.mlodehoryzonty.pl/en
industry.younghorizons.pl
