Nepal European Film Festival

How do children take Gods?

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Kathmandu, Nov. 1: Finnish Documentary film Gods of Molenbeek, shown at the opening of  the 11th edition of Nepal European Film Festival is mainly about children’s curiosity on Gods.  

Molenbeek is a district of Brussels where six- year-old Aatos and his friend Amine live.

 Aatos is a curious boy who has endless questions about god and is always on a quest to find the God of Molenbeek while Amine is a Muslim boy who firmly believes that ‘Allah’ is his God. 

Amine’s parents make him pray every day so Amin has no question about his God because he is always taught that ‘Allah’ is his God.

On the other hand, Aatos is very inquisitive about his God and from the beginning to the end of the film, he is always questioning who his God is.

Similarly, Flo, a little girl, sometimes plays with Aatos, and she believes that nature is the essence of humanity. 

When Aatos asks her about the God, she responds to him, “If you believe in God, you are crazy. And if you go crazy, you should warn me.”

 Aatos and Amine together listen to spiders, dress up as zombies and take imaginary carpet rides.

Though little, they discuss the big questions like God, death and after death, myths and the black hole. 

 Aatos, Amine and Flo sing “Happy Birthday” in every language of their community. 

These innocent children enjoying their own world are unaware of the inhumane acts of the adult world.

A sudden bombing by terrorists changes the pure friendship between the two friends. After the bombings, Aatos and his family flee Brussels and reach Finland, causing the friendship between the two kids to fall apart.


The terror and violence in Brussels severely test the children's pure friendship. 

The 72-minute film is written and directed by Reetta Huhtanen. 

The film basically tries to show the importance of friendship between children of different religions and ideologies. Unlike adults, they always put their egos aside and enjoy friendship without any iota of envy.  

 Children do  not take care of indifference shown to them and never try to judge, or interfere in others’ belief, instead they learn from each other’s experiences, one realises after watching this movie. 

This movie tries to show the behaviour of children who easily deal with vague ideologies in the simplest way.

Aatos asks big philosophical questions like “Is nature a God?” “What comes after death?” and “Who is the greatest God in the world?”. But his expression in dealing with these philosophies is as innocent and pure as children. 

Director Huhtanen has raised these big philosophical questions through the children who use them in their simple conversations.

Influence of super hero and fantasy films can be clearly seen in the  two boys. 

They wrap their whole body with napkins and lie down in the bathtub as dead persons and later wake up as zombies. They do these all because of the influence of such films on their mind.  

Director Huhtanen has meticulously demonstrated the children psychology and their curiosity to learn from each other’s experiences. 

Dialogues between the two main characters, Aatos and Amine, dominate the movie, however, brief presence of their friends, parents and the armed forces makes the movie enthralling.

The main aspect of the movie is how daily life of children is, innocent but strong friendship of children and how war and terror affect the beautiful relationship of children and how war severs friendship.

The European Film Festival begun on October 28 and will continue as physical festival in Kathmandu till November 1 . However, it will remain in online till November 28. 

For the first time the festival is going to be held in Surkhet of Karnali province where it will be held from November 5 to 8.  A total of  13 European films and three Nepali films will be streamed at the festival. 


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