As part of the FILM OHNE GRENZEN youth program, we are once again inviting students from the Oder-Spree district to film screenings followed by discussions on the Thursday of the festival.

For the first time, a selection of films is being shown, curated and presented by a youth jury.

For one week, 10th-grade students at the Maxim Gorki School in Bad Saarow gathered every morning at Cinema Bad Saarow to watch films for children and adolescents from five different countries and three continents. Together with filmmakers and project leaders Anna Faroqhi & Haim Peretz, they talked and wrote about the films—and considered which films should be shown in the school cinema program at this year's festival. In doing so, they stepped into the roles of film critics and jurors.

9:30 AM: CHUSKIT (India 2018) by Priya Ramasubban

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Seven-year-old Chuskit lives in a remote village in the Himalayan mountains. She suffers an accident and has been paraplegic ever since. (Her parents have to carry her everywhere, which is not always possible and places a heavy burden on the family.) Chuskit is bored alone at home. She desperately wants to go to school to learn something. But her grandfather, a Buddhist monk and the head of the family, is against it.

12:00 PM: THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM (USA 2019), Director: John Chester

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It had always been the big dream of Molly and John Chester to live in the country and have their own farm. However, for a long time, the food blogger and the wildlife filmmaker lived in the middle of the big city of L.A.. When they adopted a dog named Todd from the animal shelter, their happiness seemed complete at first. But Todd barked so loudly that the neighbors complained, and Molly and John were evicted from their apartment. That was the moment when both decided that it was time to change something in their lives.

The documentary tells the touching and inspiring story of John and Molly Chester, who have dedicated themselves to organic farming on their „Apricot Lane Farms“ in California for almost ten years.

Photo: Farophi/Peretz