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’.
The film’s international career starts this month at the Mumbai Film Festival (18-25 October) where it’s screening in the World Cinema section. The Thessaloniki International Film festival (2-11 November) also selected Kid because of Troch’s ‘perceptive and subtle work’. Her film will screen in the Open Horizons section there, which focuses on the most recent trends in worldwide independent production. Finally, the film will visit Los Angeles, where it’s selected for the Breakthrough section of the AFI Fest (1-8 November).
In Kid, a boy of seven lives with his mother and his slightly older brother, Billy, on a farm outside a small town. Ever since their father abandoned them a few years earlier, they have had to fend for themselves. Then disaster strikes. The two little boys have to move in with their uncle and aunt. Kid misses his mother more than ever and wants to be with her again.
Troch wrote the screenplay, while experienced hand Nico Leunen (The Invader, The Misfortunates) was in charge of editing. Frank Van den Eeden, who worked with Troch on previous films Unspoken and Someone Else’s Happiness again signed up as cinematographer.
Kid is a production of Antonino Lombardo for Prime Time and was made with the support of The Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF). The film is represented internationally by German sales agent Media Luna New Films.
Read the interview with director Fien Troch from our Flanders (i) magazine