This year's 30th anniversary edition of the Etiuda&Anima International Film Festival will begin with a unique French animation "Chicken for Linda!" (director: Chiara Malta, Sébastien Laudenbach). We invite you to the Małopolska Garden of Art on Wednesday, November 22 at 8 PM.
Chicken for Linda! is a sweet and funny film the whole family will enjoy: a film that speaks of childhood from a child’s perspective, without being overly sentimental or exaggerating, with humor, mischief, and poetry. In this film, there are no fantasy worlds: the story takes place in the present day in a small, ordinary housing project, on the day of a general strike. There are no witches, no missions to save the world, and the only character that can fly is a… chicken!
The chicken is a MacGuffin that drives the story. It provides an opportunity for a mother and daughter to come together and grieve the husband and father who passed away several years earlier, when Linda was just one. His death created a chasm between Linda and Paulette that the film will seek to bridge. Yet the focus is not at all on death; on the contrary, it’s a story about life. The narrative gradually takes on a societal dimension: Paulette and Linda magnetically draw an increasing number of people into their quest. We move from a small two-room apartment to the main courtyard of a housing project; from a single-parent family to an entire neighborhood.
Chicken for Linda! is an ode to freedom, to revolution, to disorder, even anarchy. This vitality spreads like an oil slick that coats everything it encounters: rules, common sense, the Establishment. A film that takes us back to our childhood, like the characters who, as the story progresses, regress from responsible adults to fearful, lying, cheating, individuals who reveal their weaknesses, unafraid of ridicule. It’s an offbeat film with a sharp sense of absurdity and satire. A film that takes several tangents as its tone passes from serious to a sense of wonder, told with humor that is, at times, tainted with melancholy, to touch the inner child deep inside all of us.
Directed by: Chiara Malta, Sébastien Laudenbach
Music: Clément Ducol
Production: Dolce Vita Films & Miyu Productions
Country: Francja
Year: 2023
Running Time: 73 min.
22nd November (Wednesday) - 8 PM
Małopolska Garden of Arts - Large Screening Room
has directed several short films including a trilogy on childhood that have been selected for and awarded at numerous international festivals. After her feature-length documentary Armando e la politica for la Lucarne (Arte/ZDF), she became an artist-in-residence at the Villa Medici (Rome). Her first feature film, Simple Women, featuring Jasmine Trinca and Elina Löwensohn, was the opening film for the Discovery category of the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019. She regularly directs episodes for French TV series Chronicles of the Sunand is currently in Italy shooting the first season of a series produced by Grøenlandia and Fidelio. Chicken for Linda! is her first feature animation.
Director, illustrator and professor at ENSAD (École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs), Sébastien Laudenbach has written a dozen award-winning short films selected by numerous international festivals, as well as credit packages and music videos. With his feature film The Girl Without Hands, presented at Cannes, awarded at the Annecy International Animation Festival, and in competition for a César award, Sébastien Laudenbach has developed a lively ,signature style full of movement, while remaining effective and to the point.
