“NAE
have given us chances to visit different festivals around the world. Apart from
the most popular ones, this time, we are granted
the chance to visit a city that not many have even known about – Zlín in Czech.



The
56th Zlín Film Festival is a festival focused in Children and Youth, which I
didn't expect much. However after the visit,
my mind is utterly changed, and the experience has created one of the greatest
impact to my creative life. Films for Children are easily mistaken as naive and
simple, but that is totally incorrect. From the screenings I have seen during
the festival, I found that the works are actually the best collections for
children and youth from around the world, and they are totally mind-blowing.
There are deep feelings and self-reflections
inside, but with really simple elements. The clever use of the visual languages
can be well perceived by their target audience, the
children. I am so touched and inspired by those works. We have met festival
organizers from different countries and they presented the information about
their festivals, like Germany,
France, japan, etc. The sharing among
children film festival organizers also widened my horizon, which I
believe Film fests for Children are blooming quickly and will soon become a
trend in film making - both independent and commercial
fields. In that way we found out how trending of film
festival for children is.”



—Shared by
Lee Ka-yin Eric, director of Dancing Eye, after attending the Zlin Film
Festival 2016 – 56th International Film Festival for Children and
Youth in the Czech Republic, under the sponsorship of NAE.