03/05/2016 - Arne Toonen’s Little Gangster and French director Rudi Rosenberg’s The New Kid took the top prizes at the Kristiansand Children’s Film Festival

Already awarded at four international film festivals, Dutch director Arne Toonen’s comedy Little Gangster [+see also:
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film profile] took the €8,200 top prize for Best Foreign Kidpic at the 19^th Kristiansand Children’s Film Festival, Norway’s largest and a leading European showcase for young audiences, which ended Sunday (1 May).

Little Gangster, which also opened the event with Toonen and his lead actor Thor Mozes Braun in attendance, is the story of 11-year-old Rik Boskamp, who wants a new life where he is not mobbed at school, and his father is not a loser. So when they move, he changes his name to Rikki Boskampi and convices everybody that his father is a dangerous mafia boss.

Since it opened on 26 April, the festival has screened 108 films from 29 countries – “representing the best, funniest, most exciting and engaging children’s cinema made today,” in the words of festival director Danckert Monrad-Krohn – adding a programme of seminars for film professionals, with ao ceo Maurice Wheeler of the UK’s Little Big Partnership.

French actor-director Rudi Rosenberg’s The New Kid [+see also:
film review
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interview: Rudi Rosenberg
film profile] received the ECFA-prize from the European Children’s Film Association, which was awarded at the festival for the fifth time, qualifying the winner for the competition for Best European Kidpic. Répaël Ghrenassia stars as Benoît, the new kid who is bullied at school and decides to organise a party for his whole class. 

The Audience Award went to Estonian director Margus Paju’s The Secret Society of Souptown [+see also:
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film profile] about a town attacked by a mystical virus which turns all the grown-ups into children. Four 10-year-old ”detectives” fight back. The jury of Film Fest Young chose Norwegian director Halkawt Mustafa’s Iranian story El Clásico [+see also:
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interview: Halkawt Mustafa
film profile] as its festival favourite. 

The awards:

Best Foreign Kidpic
Arne Toonen - Little Gangster [+see also:
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film profile]

ECFA-prize from the European Children’s Film Association
Rudi Rosenberg - The New Kid [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rudi Rosenberg
film profile]

Audience Award
Margus Paju – The Secret Society of Souptown [+see also:
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film profile]

Film Fest Young Jury
Halkawt Mustafa - El Clásico [+see also:
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interview: Halkawt Mustafa
film profile]