A Little Pilot

Little Pila is a girl aged four with plenty of energy and imagination, and more than anything in the world, she longs to discover unknown lands. When her parents are at work, Pila spends time with her caring and anxious grandfather, an old man with a long grey beard and hair. Grandfather owns an old atlas with pictures of distant continents. Pila loves going through its exciting pages, imagining their bathtub is an ocean she can dive in, the lamps are forest vines she can climb like a monkey... Yet Pila’s energy and imaginary adventures cause havoc in the household, things come tumbling down, and Pila is constantly on the verge of falling. To protect her, Grandfather places an old weathered helmet on Pila’s head, and she decorates it with a rooster sticker. However, the rooster with a rainbow tail comes to life, and transports both adventurous Pila and her cautious Grandfather to distant lands.

Director’s statement
My dad used to ride me on a motorcycle as a child. He always placed a huge helmet on my head and then I could choose which way to go. Because as a preschooler I was afraid to go further than the end of our street, it was always such an adventurous expedition for me. My haunting notions of what it looks like on the other side of the city gradually began to dissolve and were replaced by other, far nicer ones: What does it look like a bit further, and then even further, and what does it look like on the other side of the world?
The motif of overcoming oneself, the gradual elimination of fear and the acquisition of the desire to discover and explore the world is the driving force behind the story in the series The Little Pilot.