Quality and social value have the biggest appeal at annual Reel 2 Real Film Festival for Youth
There are eight features and 35 shorts among the workshops and other festivities at this year’s R2R, starting with opener Nina and the Hedgehog’s Secret
Nina and the Hedgehog’s Secret (2023).
The Reel 2 Real Film Festival for Youth takes place at the VIFF Centre and Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre from April 7 to 16
THE ACCLAIMED FRENCH animated feature Phantom Boy headlined the Reel 2 Real Film Festival for Youth in 2016. It was the first film ever brought to the festival by T. Bannister, and eight years later, the director of programming has booked the latest by the filmmaking team of Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli to open this year’s edition of R2R at the VIFF Centre on April 7. Nina and the Hedgehog’s Secret, like Phantom Boy, is a breezy and charming hand-drawn effort with serious themes. In other words, a kid’s film that respects its audience.
“For one, it’s in English, that’s always a good place to start,” says Bannister, when asked about the choice. “But it appeals to all ages, it’s animated, it has a number of really great talents attached to it. These are filmmakers that we supported before, so it’s a little bit of a full-circle moment for me. And I think just having a film that speaks to some of the things we’re seeing in this moment; there’s definitely a workers’ rights angle in there, which is relevant, and it features kids that are precocious and have this desire for justice, which I think is also of the moment.”
Reel 2 Real was founded an incredible 26-years-ago by Venay Felton, who still presides over the event with what Bannister affectionately describes as a “mothering presence.” Its remit has been consistent the entire time. “She’s singularly driven to educate young people through animation and film,” says Bannister, of a 10-day festival brimming with features, shorts programs, animation workshops, and popular attractions like the annual pancake breakfast, taking place on Sunday Fun Day! (April 14) at the Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre. The festival naturally attracts “intense interest” from educators and Bannister notes that the elementary program workshops are already sold out, adding: “I wish we had more days. I wish we could make a longer festival and make sure that more classes could attend from further away.”
The public events are no less popular, and Sunday Fun Day! offers all of this year’s short film programs—35 titles in all—including an Indigenous Spotlight and a collection of movies given the title Asia Animated Around the World. Bannister leads a screening committee of young people, industry professionals, Indigenous representatives, and other program advisors. “Quality” is the primary value.
“We have the exceptional task of creating entertaining and educational experiences, and every now and then we are lucky enough that the films we show align to make a social impact,” says the programmer. “We have a lot discussion about it, there’s a lot of notes that get written about many of the films that we all see, and we have to just marinate it down to what is going to connect best with our audiences. Our films have to work for folks of all ages but they also have to have some educational value for schools.”
To that end, Bannister’s team has rounded up another schedule of eight thought-provoking features. In the Quebecois period piece Adventures in the Land of Asha, a young outcast from a settler community joins an Indigenous girl on a journey into the wilderness. In the German feature Boyz, three teenage friends defy the models of male friendship thrust upon them as adulthood looms. The flipside comes with Chilean-Panamanian drama Sister and Sister, which follows teen siblings on a mission to find their missing father while partying in Costa Rica. There’s much more and the quality is characteristically impressive. If anything’s changed, it’s a growing interest in youth content among the distributors that a festival like R2R partners with.
Adventures in the Land of Asha.
“My gut sense is there’s a bit of response in the industry to the big superhero movies that have dominated the box office, and I think everybody, especially A24 and organizations like that, they’ve realized that they can make smaller films that are a little more risky and there’s an audience for them, and it’s actually becoming cool again,” offers Bannister, who points (gamely, if a little reluctantly, cause it’s an unfair question) to Jordan’s animated Saleem when pressed to single out a title with personal significance. “Not only does it offer a deep respect for the tradition of connective storytelling that the region is known for, it also centres the experience of a young refugee, and it’s important for Canadians to understand this lived experience, in my perspective.”
Saleem is also the first Jordanian film to be screened at the prestigious Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France while director Cynthia Madanat Sharaiha found herself on Screen Daily’s recent list of Arab Star of Tomorrow. Like so much of the content at R2R, it stands as a desired countervailing force to the type of media consumed by the TikTok generation.
“I think a lot of the content that young people consume is fast paced, and sometimes the content can be a bit…” Bannister pauses, chuckles, “… esoteric. I think the thing that hasn’t changed is that good stories will always prevail, no matter what. I have observed that it doesn’t matter as long as the story is compelling and young people can connect with it. We get audiences of 500, 700 kids a day sometimes watching tons of short films or a feature film and I haven’t heard one complaint from a teacher or student in the 10 years that I’ve been doing this that something has been too slow or not accessible. They tend to like the things that give them space to think, and a bit of a break from the other stuff that they’re consuming, I imagine.”
Kids appreciate quality and any parent knows it, as do Felton and Bannister. It’s wired right in. 
Related Articles
