The Kite tells the story of a little boy from the city who visits his grandfather in the countryside, where together they fly a kite. In the animation, the boy and his grandpa are constructed of layers, symbolizing their age. The boy has many, representing the fact that he has his whole life ahead of him, while his grandfather has only a few layers left—the older he gets,

the thinner he is. At the end of his life, the grandfather is as thin as a single sheet of paper, until one day the wind gently lifts him up and blows him into the sky.

The Kite deals with the issue of death, but does so in a simple, metaphorical way, through the relationship between the little boy and his grandfather. None of us are here forever, and all living creatures must die, the movie explains. But death doesn’t mean the end of our journey.

Smatana’s film was produced by Peter Badač (BFILM.cz), in coproduction with Slovak BFILM, FAMU, and the Polish studio CeTA. World sales are represented by Georg Gruber (Magnetfilm). The film was supported by the Czech Film Fund with €28,856, with additional funding from the Slovak Audiovisual Fund, the Nadačni fond Filmtalent Zlin, and the Nadacia Tatra Banky.

Martin Smatana (born in Slovakia in 1991) earned his master’s degree in animation from FAMU. During his bachelor’s studies, he did an internship at Nukufilm studio in Tallinn, Estonia. For five years he conducted animation workshops for children. His debut film, Rosso Papavero, premiered at Berlinale 2015 Generation Kplus and won 13 international awards. The Kite, his stop-motion film for children, was completed in November 2018 and has already been honored with first prize from the Animarkt Pitching Forum 2017 in Łodź, Poland.