Docs Barcelona 2013/ 4
It was indeed a grand opening night of DocsBarcelona. A proud director, Joan Gonzalez introduced all the elements – the festival, still young, and the industry section, a teenager, 16 years, with new or young components like the InterdocsBarcelona seminar on interactive documentaries and the rough cut sessions mentioned in the post below.
Around 1000 people attended the opening screening of the Belgian animation documentary “Approved for Adoption” by Jung & Laurent Boileau, the touching story about Jung, adopted from Korea by a family in Belgium, a family with several biological children already. Jung, who is an excellent draughtsman and has published a book with his drawings – his autobiography that – as he said in the cinema – had been transferred into a beautifully told cinematic story with archive material (official and the family’s home movies) plus a great variety of material from the hand of Jung, both simple animation sequences but also drawings that could work in any art exhibition. The modest director explained after the screening how his family had received the story that at many points are tough with the mother and father reacting to their Asian child, who is searching for his identity. Warm, funny, well told, straight forward it is, a perfect choice for making a good atmosphere for the DocsBarcelona.
Hans Christian Andersen would have loved this fairy tale.
Belgium, 2012, 75 mins.
