Sirocco and The Kingdom of the Winds: dir Benoît Chieux (2023)

This slightly trippy animation features two intrepid sisters, four-year-old Juliette and eight-year-old Carmen, who discover a passage into the extraordinary world of their favourite book, Kingdom of the Air Streams. Transformed into cats and separated from each other, the girls will have to be bold and daring to find their way back to each other and to their real world; but they have to deal with Sirocco, the master of winds and storms. Is he as scary as they fear? The Variety review suggested the film could be seen as France’s answer to a film like Spirited Away — “and yet, there’s an originality to it that keeps things surprising”.

Screens as part of Sharjah Art Foundation’s Sunday Cinema Club – a free film followed by a talk or a workshop, 3pm each Sunday from 5 July to 30 Aug at the Photography Gallery in Al Manakh. Films are child-friendly animations (5–19 July), pioneering science fiction (26 July–9 Aug), or “significant works of Arab cinema” (16-20 Aug). The workshop for this afternoon is on wind chimes: in the whimsical world of the film, wind becomes a force of adventure and transformation. “Engage with the wind in your own way by making a decorative wind chime … from paper, ribbons, string and mixed-media materials”.