My Experience With Film Festivals

Twice in the year of 2010, I have been to a film festivals. The first one I went to was in April and it was called Sprockets Film Festival. Sprockets is a film festival for kids. I saw two foreign films. Both of them were from Denmark. The first film that I saw there was Karla and Katrine. Karla and Katrine tells the story of a Danish girl named Karla. She lives with her mom, her two brothers and her stepdad. I guess the mom divorced the original dad. Anyways, Karla had a best friend named Katrine, but she hasn't hung out with her in ages. So, she decides to invite Katrine to her summer house out in the country. Katrine accepts the offer. When they get there and go out for a walk, these two creepy punks try and mug them. Fortunately, some young guy named Jonas rescues them. People in the town where the summer house is think that Jonas is some sort of shoplifter. Karla and Katrine don't, though. Oh, the mom also took her depressed friend along with her. The friend is female and was in a relationship that ended badly. The dad has a problem, though. The mom won't spend any time with him. I know, cold. This movie was fantastic. I loved it. It was way better than the second movie that I will tell you about quite soon. Plus, this movie was an approximate running time of 84 minutes. Now, I shall tell you about the second film. The plot is quite simple. The title is Max Embarrassing and it's about Max, a teenager who has an embarrassing mom, a crush on a girl in his class and a neighbor who does very strange activities. That is basically the plot. It's just about his life. This was not nearly as good as the first film I saw. I found that it went on a little too long (it ran for 90 minutes, 6 minutes longer than Karla and Katrine) and that it just wasn't as interesting. It still was worth seeing, though. Okay, so fast forward 5 months into my life and I am standing in AMC Yonge and Dundas Theater in Toronto, Canada. I am here to see a movie at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival). Toronto International Film Festival started in 1976. It has been the starting point for films that are famous in the movie world today such as Almost Famous (bad-duh-da), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Lost In Translation. Cool, huh? Anyways, I was there at TIFF 200. I didn't see any films in English, though. I didn't see the films I wished I could see like Easy A, It's Kind Of A Funny Story and The Town. Yep, I rocked another Danish film. It was actually about some of the characters from the first movie I talked about. It is called Karla and Jonas and it tells the story of the characters from Karla and Katrine, Karla and Jonas. In the film, Jonas is living in a foster home and his only friend is an adult. Sadly, the adult is leaving to work at another foster home. Jonas gets ticked off and storms out of the home. Then, Karla decides to help Jonas by trying to find his biological mother. That is all it is about. Nothing too complicated. This wasn't as good as Karla and Katrine, but it still was entertaining. Why was it not better than the movie Karla and Katrine? I don't know, but it just wasn't. What was cool was that I got to meet the director. It was no big name director like Ang Lee or Atom Egoyan, but it was still cool. So, it wasn't as good as the first film festival movie I saw. Big deal. I had a great time. So, that is all the experience I have had with film festivals. Hopefully, I get to go to another one.