Oink

Believe it or not, sausages set things in motion here. The 100th anniversary of the Sausage King contest is coming up, but Babs wants nothing to do with it – she’s a vegetarian. Then suddenly her previously unknown grandfather turns up in her garden. Babs and her friend Tijn want to get rid of him, but the grandfather wins Babs over by giving her a piglet named Oink. The mother is not entirely comfortable with the idea and decides that Oink can only stay if he learns to behave and, well, not leave poo everywhere, so that means pet-training school. While Babs is enjoying her new role as a piglet-keeper and her mother is getting used to her father’s presence, Tijn remains sceptical. Are there more dangers lurking for Oink than they first thought? It remains suspenseful until the very end.

The endearing stop-motion film is rich in detail with ample space to discover the peculiarities of the characters and their relationships to each other. With her feature-length debut, presented in “Coming Soon” at Fantoche 2021, director Mascha Halberstad recently won the Barnfondens Award for Best Comedy at BUFF, the International Children and Young People’s Film Festival in Malmö. Furthermore, this Dutch-Belgian co-production opened the Generation Kplus competition at this year’s Berlinale. (Neomi Grieder)