Kid

Fien Troch’s Kid, Peter Monsaert’s Offline and Roman Klochkov’s Natasha were the big winners at the 14th Aubagne International Film Festival (8-23 March). While Kid received both the Grand Jury Prize and the Award for Best Music, Offline scooped the Award for Best Script. Roman Klochkov’s Natasha was awarded the Prize for Best Animated Short Film. It was also announced that French distributor Mica Films is to release Monsaert’s Offline in French theatres this summer.

In addition to the Grand Jury Prize Fien Troch’s third feature film, Kid, also received the Award for Best Music, acknowledging Senjan Jansen’s original musical score. Kid follows the story of a seven-year-old boy who lives with his mother and brother on a farm. The fatherless family struggles to make ends meet. When disaster strikes and the two brothers have to move in with their aunt and uncle, Kid misses his mother more than ever and longs to be with her. The film received a special mention at the latest edition of the Ghent Film Festival.

This January four Flemish films will have their American premieres at the Palm Springs International Film Festival (3-14 January 2013). The four are Gert Embrecht’s Allez, Eddy!, Fien Troch’s Kid, Nic Balthazar’s Time of My Life and Peter Brosens & Jessica Woodworth’s The Fifth Season. Joachim Lafosse’s Our Children, a co-production with Flanders, is also screening at Palm Springs.

With 130,000 visitors Palm Springs International Film Festival is one of the biggest in North America. The fest has developed quite an appetite for Flemish cinema. Ever since Memory of a Killer, Palm Springs has invited one or two Flemish films each year.

Fien Troch’s latest feature film Kid received a Special Mention at the 39th Ghent Film Festival, while Name of the Fathers by Timothy Wennekes was awarded Best Belgian Student Short Film. In the same section, Lukas Dhondt’s Headlong (Corps Perdu) was acknowledged with an honorable mention. Earlier this week, Bullhead-DOP Nicolas Karakatsanis already won the Jo Röpcke Award in Ghent.

The fest’s International Jury lauded Troch for her authentic style of actors’ direction and her bold approach on the themes of family and childhood. American journalist and film critic Joan Dupont chaired the jury this year.

Fien Troch’s new feature film Kid has been selected for the Alice in the City competition of the Rome International Film Festival (9-17 November). In addition to the Rome fest, the film will also travel to festivals in Mumbai, Thessaloniki and Los Angeles. Earlier this week, Fien Troch received a Special Mention from the international jury for her film at the Flanders International Film Festival Ghent.

The selection in Rome guarantees Kid a strong international platform as evinced by the international success of Bavo Defurne’s North Sea Texas which featured in Rome’s Alice in the City last year and won the fest's Marc’Aurelio Alice Nella Città 13+ Award. The Alice in the City competition, in their own words, is ‘always trying to reveal the vitality of a free and authentic sight’.

While children only appear on the periphery of Fien Troch's previous features, Someone Else's Happiness and Unspoken, they play an essential narrative role in each film. 'The children were mirrors for my main characters, or they represented the still clean, naive world that the adults had lost,' she explains. 'All of my stories became the stories they are because of the involvement of children. So I decided, if these children are so important, why don't I try to make a film in which they are the main characters?' The result is Kid (pictured still on the right). Set in rural Flanders, it tells the story of a seven-year-old boy struggling to replace the lost love of his mother.

Text Ian Mundell    

The story Troch chose this time explores the way in which children deal with emotional trauma. 'I wanted to convey how children are still flexible in the way they get bad news, that they can survive it just because they are kids, they can play and so on, and how long it is before that play doesn't work any more.'