'The Lost Thing' will play on Short Stacks Family Film Day

“The Lost Thing” is playing as part of Sarasota Film Festival’s Short Stacks Family Film Day Saturday, April 9.

The Film Festival’s first Short Stacks Family Film Day will include a morning full of film, fun and pancakes, featuring a youthFEST short-film program screening, pancake breakfast, plus a handful of Kids Reel Life Studio workshop activities, such as animation and improv acting. All proceeds benefit the Outreach and Education Department and help keep educational programming free.

Breakfast seatings are at 9 and 10 a.m. The short-film program begins at 11 a.m., and activities are from 9 to 11 a.m.

Tickets are on sale now at sarasotafilmfestival.com.

Brenna Maginness
Seventh grade
Sarasota School of Arts & Sciences

Overall, “The Lost Thing,” by Shaun Tan, was a creative and original animation. The boy and the lost thing were very interesting characters with their own way of expressing their thoughts and ideas.

The film began with the boy explaining how he was going to tell us a story. I think this was an interesting idea. Not many films begin as flashbacks. The boy finds the lost thing on the beach, and after playing with it until everyone leaves, the boy realizes that the lost thing has no owner. The boy brought it to his friend, who also declared the thing to be lost. The boy took it home, where he saw a commercial for where to take the lost thing. When he went there he found it was a dark, ominous building. The creature there told him that it was the wrong place to take a creature he loved, so instead he followed the arrows to a happy place, where the creature lived happily ever after.

There was a particularly good scene where the doors open to the happy place where the creature should go and live. Unlike the city, it is full of sunlight and color. As the camera shows different creatures, I can’t help but notice the stunning contrast between the city and the happy place. It shows you that the lost thing has finally found a place to be where it can be happy. The director seemed to enjoy comparing light and dark.

In conclusion, this movie was enjoyable. I liked the originality and the message about creativity. It teaches a valuable lesson in an entertaining way.

Jennifer Castillo
Seventh grade
Booker Middle School

In this heartwarming animated short film, a young boy, who collects bottle tops, discovers something that changes his entire perspective, a lost thing. On an adventure he goes to find where it belongs. When I first watched this, I was amazed at all the many different lost things there were.

In the boy’s world, the sky is dark and gloomy. It’s like everything has a place, and everything looks exactly alike. There’s no creativity or originality, and there are no children. There is no fun, joy or difference in the boy’s world. Everyone is mature and very strict — all until the boy finds the lost thing. In the part when the boy is at the dark, windowless building, someone tells the boy not to turn him into the agency, to go and find the special place for all lost things.

In the lost thing’s world, there is color, joy and creativity. Everything accepts everyone. No one thing looks like another. They all like to play with one another and help one another. It’s every unwanted thing’s heaven. Everything is made from different parts of animals, machines, tools and much more. That’s when I discovered a major detail in this film, “Everything has a purpose.”

Toward the very end of the film, the young boy has grown up to a young man. He starts to notice less and less lost things. I think that once you grow up, you start to lose all imagination, and in our lifetime, we all have at least found something lost and try to find its place.

I loved “The Lost Thing.” I recommend this for all ages and to everyone who wants to find a place. I give this short film five golden stars.