This film is by Film Bilder, the studio who made Head Up. This film, part of the Animanimals series by Julie Ocker, depicts the systematic and collective life of an ant colony. The military precision of the ants is an apt catalyst to discuss the … [Read more...]
Alike
This father and son tale is about the apathy and low mood caused by overwork and isolation. A father is miserable at work while his son, still young, is optimistic about going to school. The son’s cheerful moods get more and more repressed as his … [Read more...]
Unplugged
This short and simple film is about renewable energy. It is the only work in the Library to directly and explicitly address this important concept for the future of Europe. At only 90 seconds long, the film is a perfectly bite-size film for students … [Read more...]
Where’s the Starfish?
Barroux’s sequel to Where’s the Elephant? plays upon the same premise. The ludic format of the wimmelbook, such as Where’s Wally, becomes a catalyst for an important message about protecting the environment. Children will have great fun spotting the … [Read more...]
Waterloo & Trafalgar
War and violence are integral to the history of Europe as well as its present, but the explicit representation of these themes can be challenging in a classroom context. This picturebook by French artist Olivier Tallec gently raises these themes in a … [Read more...]
Where’s the Elephant?
Children, like adults, quickly develop sophisticated expectations of genre and style – for example, seeking to see the similarities that define certain types of picturebooks. This picturebook by French artist Barroux plays upon these expectations by … [Read more...]
Meidän piti lähteä [We had to Leave]
This is another example of a wordless picturebook that deals with the topic of the migrant crisis. We Had to Leave is gentler and happier than the other examples in the corpus: Migrando [Migrating], Orizzonti [Horizons], and Mediterraneo [The … [Read more...]
Deux Amis [Two Friends]
The animation in this French film is comparable to that of Novembre [November]. An unlikely friendship between a tadpole and caterpillar progresses as each grows up into two very different beings: a frog and a butterfly. The film centres the classic … [Read more...]
Die Igel und die Stadt [Hedgehogs and the City]
This beautiful example of Baltic (Latvian) stop-motion begins with a depiction of the role of industry in a changing landscape: a snowy forest scene is obliterated, and a city pops up in its place. In the centre of the city square is a park in which … [Read more...]
