SoundsLikeTeenSpirit

Bio

Sounds Like Teen Spirit is an affectionate, comic and unique feature documentary that delves behind the scenes of the world's premiere youth music spectacle; The Junior Eurovision Song Contest. While The Eurovision Song Contest has matured into the highest rating non-sporting event in the world, enjoyed by over six hundred Million people annually, Junior Eurovision, is somewhat more of a home-grown affair. Now in its seventh year, the Junior competition differs in one major aspect from the adult competition: all of the ten to fifteen year old amateur contestants must compose and write their own entries and sing them in their national language. Not knowing who would make it through all seventeen participating countries' national selections, the crew travelled from Belarus to the Ukraine, Cyprus to Belgium and Malta to Sweden to see just whom each nation selected to represent them in Rotterdam at the final of Junior Eurovision 2007. As the results came in we started our journey with the following finalists: fourteen year old Marina from Bulgaria part of the group "Bon Bon" who were formed on a local TV show; the group "Trust" comprised of fifteen year old school friends, and talented musicians Eva, Matthieu, Laurence and Mirek from Ypres in Belgium; thirteen year old Mariam, an inhabitant of Stalin's birth place Gori in Georgia, and the daughter of internally displaced refugees; and ten year old Greek Cypriot Giorgos, a wannabe opera singer who hates football, and admires George Michael. Always a little apart from our continental neighbours, the UK no longer takes part in the Junior contest, but through the eyes of one young English film maker Sounds Like Teen Spirit explores what it means to grow up in Europe today as we follow the dreams and fortunes of young hopefuls from four very different parts of the continent. Thanks to their self-penned songs that capture pure amateur youth angst and passions, the film explores issu