Passionate Pursuits

People with a passion so strong they live, practice, or focus more effort towards their goal than anything else they know. Seeing their stories might get you inspired to do stuff! The passionate pursuits shared on this reel include a documentary about Julieta who is determined to get plastic out of the ocean for the benefit of sea turtles; Ramón, an eight-year-old Mexican kid who wants to be the next kickboxing champ and Jay Jay Patton who was only 13 when she designed and built Photo Patch, a mobile app to help kids send photos and letters to parents who are incarcerated. What’s your passionate pursuit?!

GENERATION IMPACT: The Coder – Jay Jay Patton was only 13 when she designed and built Photo Patch, a mobile app inspired by her own experience that helps kids send photos and letters to parents who are incarcerated. (2021 / 7 mins / USA / dir.Samantha Knowles / in English)

FORGOT YOUR PASSWORD – Soraïva, a young explorer, reaches an ancient temple after a long journey. She knows there’s treasure inside the temple, but she forgot the password required to enter. (2020 / 7 mins / France / dirs. Clarisse Tronchon, Florian Ojeda Diop, Manon Mergnat / no dialogue)

STAR BOUND – Joey Jefferson, a mission operations engineer at NASA, talks with his outer space-obsessed 6-year-old nephew Jerry Morrison. Beneath their discussion of space is the uncle’s excitement for what his nephew will encounter in life as he pursues his passions. (2021 / 3 mins / USA / dir. Richard O’Connor / in English)

HANNAH’S DREAM – Eight-year-old Hannah lives alone with her father, a composer who develops depression as a result of the COVID quarantine. A beautiful idea springs from her struggles to connect with him. This is a stunning story on music’s power to connect, inspire and heal. (2021 / 13 mins / Netherlands / dirs. Emily Reekers, Eugene Arts / in Dutch w/English subtitles)

MASTER PAINTER RANKSY – Street artist Ranksy (Rat + Banksy?) spots a rooftop party and uses her mad mural skills to join the fun. (2020 / 2 mins / Germany / dir Uli Seis / no dialogue)

JULIETA AND THE TURTLE IN THE PLASTIC SOUP – Fourteen-year-old Julieta feels most at home under the sea. But there, she encounters the ocean’s greatest enemy: the actions of people. Julieta and her friends overcome some pessimistic thoughts about the state of the planet in order to continue their work to rescue sea turtles from marine litter. (2020 / 15 mins / Netherlands, Curaçao / dir. Mirjam Marks / in Dutch, French and English and English subtitles)

RAMÓN – Eight-year-old Ramón has a passion for kickboxing. He trains, gets suited up with a significant amount of safety gear, grabs his stuffed animal and he’s off to the fights! Well sort of. They all want to win a trophy as large as they are but it soon becomes apparent that after the “fighters” are done, they are just as happy playing games with each other free of padding and aggressiveness. (2020 / 7 mins / Mexico / dir. Natalia Bernal / in Spanish w/English subtitles)

SOUNDS BETWEEN THE CROWNS – A queen kicks a homeless musician out of the city and destroys his instrument because she was repulsed by his face. Not a nice person in many ways. However, the musician refuses to live without music in his life and fixes his instrument in the woods creating one more beautiful than the original. And the queen? She’s still miserable despite hearing his beautiful music. (2021 / 15 mins / Czech Republic / dir. Filip Diviak / no dialogue)

FUNDAMENTALS OF ART – What if your art teacher was more like your gym teacher and even had a whistle? Being instructed to do 10 push-ups is a bit different than being given the assignment to paint a still life. There’s one way to do a push-up, there are countless ways to paint! Natalie not only persists to complete the assignment the way she believes it should be done, but she also ends up teaching others as well. (2020 / 5 mins / Czech Republic / dir. David Payne / no dialogue)