Student / Rising Stars

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7′

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The Chicken’s Calling

(Working Title)

A school bully appears to be attacked by gigantic chickens at school, forcing the child to get to the root of its anger and face its grief.

The whole film is from the POV of a schoolchild, a bully. Pupils get pushed, things kicked. As the pupils start to defend themselves, the child perceives them as huge chickens. Eventually the child is surrounded by angry attacking chickens. The child panics and runs away. He flees into his mind, to a time where he was friends with a baby chick. The memory of the loss of the chick appears in his mind. The child is in a deep state of grief. His sorrow turns into anger and he takes it out on everyone in school. The situation escalates. Imagination and reality fuse together, leading to a point where the child hurts a pupil. Chaos erupts and the child gets pulled away and separated. Awaiting punishment, the child interacts with a small bird, who smashed into the window. Hesitating to let the bird lose, the child starts to come to terms with his trauma. Pecking chickens in the yard are no longer attacking the child, nor even taking notice of him. Finally the child decides to let the bird fly away.

Director’s statement
I love first-perspective novels. They fascinate me and pull me into the story, making me really feel the emotions the narrator has. I feel I am the character. Films usually show the third-person-perspective, since you fully see the characters act. I want a first-person narrative. I want the audience to really be in the film, to give a view of the world that is similar to the way it is in gaming. Thus, all happens from the main character’s POV. At first, the story was supposed to show the perspective of a bullied child. While researching, I realized that no-one is mean without reasons, yet those are rarely investigated. The bully gets punished for his actions and not asked why. So I decided to swap the perspective to the mean kid. I don’t want to justify rude behavior, but show that it may be worth taking the time to dig deeper and start finding the true issue.

Director and Scriptwriter
Rebecca Osterberg
hallo@rebecca-osterberg.de

Country of production

Germany

Target audience

adults

Animation Technique

stop motion

Production company

Hochschule Wismar

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CEE Animation is supported by the Creative Europe – MEDIA Programme of the European Union and co-funded by state funds and foundations and professional organisations from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

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