For a Few Marbles More Review-By Kelsey Zukowski

Original Title: Voor een paar knikkers meer
Starring: Pauline Winckel, Tom Schild, Edo Brunner, Rob Prenger, Ruben van den Besselaar, Merijn van Heiningen
Written & Directed By: Jelmar Hufen
Grade: B+

For a Few Marbles More is a Dutch short children’s film. It has been getting recognition from film festivals all over the world. It has won 15 awards from these festivals and all in all has been selected to show in over 130 film festivals. This worldwide recognition the film is receiving is well deserved. The film only has a running time of 11 minutes, but it uses this time wisely and with dedication and perspective.

Four Ten-year-olds spend most of their time at a playground in their neighborhood. Playing with marbles is one of their favorite things to do there. They challenge each other and compete for each others’ marbles, trying to get as many as they can throughout the games they play. However, soon their play comes to a massive halt when two older drunken men take over the playground, kicking the kids out, even threatening them with violence. The kids have no choice but to leave. They go to their parents for help, hoping they can get back their playground. None of the kids parents are very helpful, many don’t even listen to the troubles that their children are expressing and pleading with them to help them fix. After this attempt fails, they try to find a substitute to their old playground. It just isn’t the same though and even more so, they want to find justice for the wrongdoings that were done to them. They know that they can’t take on these two men on their own, so they get some help from the toughest kid in the neighborhood. It will cost them their marbles though; one of their proudest possessions. They decide it is worth it though to take back what they were deprived of.

Everyone in the film gave good performances. Out of the kids the ones that stood out the most were Pauline Winckel and Tom Schild. Winckel reminded me of a more direct and intense Carly Schroeder as Millie from Mean Creak. As the only girl in the group Winckel reflected a tom boy through toughness that thrived for righteousness. There was such determination shown just throughout her facial expressions that made us completely believed her. While Winckel got us to the next step of retaliation, Schild shows us the previous feelings of being taken advantage of, helplessness, and grief. Schild and Winckel share some of their feelings, but each specializing and being able to bring out one so powerfully, links them together more, serving as a metaphor for their friendship itself. Friendship is dealt with here as giving you the people who are really always there for you, even when things get bad. It exposes the ying and yang that holds you together, that makes you better, and is the support and strength that fuels you.

The story seems simple and to some degree it is, but it builds off the story itself and exerts a purpose and meaning in to it. This is not just about a playground. When the kids go home looking for help after the thing they hold the dearest has been snatched right before their very noses, they find nothing. Many of the parents are absent, barely acknowledging their children or are so busy violently fighting with each other in their broken home to really care. The one parent that actually becomes aware of the problem just brushes it off, basically telling his son that he has to learn to get along with them. No questions are even asked and if they were I would hope that they would act a bit differently. After all it isn’t troublesome kids that took the playground, it is fully grown men throwing full beer bottles at the kids, never leaving the playground and threatening the children with worse. This is the type of problem that they shouldn’t have to deal with, as the predator has such a higher advantage than the victims. You would think any parents would be rushing out to protect their children from this, but instead most aren’t even aware of it, despite their children’s best efforts. The plot with essentially absent parents does more than just show additional complications. It exposes that none of these kids have a good home life with concern or support of their family. These 10-year-old kids are each others family. They pick up the slack where the blood relatives fall short. They empower each other, giving them care and capabilities that they couldn’t have found within themselves otherwise. They are true family to each other and their home is that playground. It is the place that they can go to escape the bad and have fun embracing their youth, which at their age is really all that they should be worrying about. There is time for everything else later.

Writer/director, Jelmar Hufen, had done a few other minor projects in the Netherlands, but this is really his big debut. With For A Few Marbles More, being recognized so widely, and dealing with such care, determination, and reflective justice, it is safe to say that he is one to keep looking out for in the future. This short film is a tremendous start to his career and speaks volumes to everything else that he is capable of and will most likely share with the world again in the future. For a Few Marbles More is a film that everyone can benefit from, but all kids especially can gain so much from. For one thing it is told and showed through the perspective of the kids, which add a lot to the film, making us trust and feel for them even more. The drunk men are shown from a distance, but most of the parents aren’t even on screen. This just illustrates how little they are in their kids’ lives. For a Few Marbles More shows a kids’ world and how even in the adult world they can take control and get the respect and freedom that they deserve. It is a tale of the balance of unity of friends and independence that is within each person. It encourages kids to stand up for themselves and voices the viewpoint that everyone is capable of anything, making any wrong happening right through finding and using unique strengths inside of yourself. Yes, the kids do get help, but the tough kid really doesn’t do anything, but give the other kids the faith and force that they had all along. It is really about taking charge yourself when something you love and hold so closely is at stake.