Jake Fortune
Ana's Playground was screened earlier tonight at the Minneapolis Film Festival with an array of wonderful short films. Ana's Playground stunned the sold out auditorium. Writer/Director Eric D. Howell has created and crafted a riveting story about children and war. Ana's Playground looks right, sounds right and plays shockingly right in its urban war zone setting - one of those pockets of rubble, shredded flesh and monochromatic color that exist in Gaza, Baghdad, Rwanda, Bosnia, Dresden and Detroit in the mid-1960's. Only 16 minutes long, the film succeeds at the highest levels of the short story form by making its point dramatically, believably and quickly. It does so while generating untempered tension. I rank it with "Grave of the Fireflies" (Japan), "The Road" (U.S.) and "Turtles Can Fly" (Iran/Iraq) in its honest portrayal of a child's point of view regarding the terrible worlds that grown-ups have had no-business foisting on them.
