courtesy of: Aruba-Daily News
Children of the Wind wins the BMW Awards this week at the Aruba International Film Festival 2012 and will be re-shown on Thursday.
Children of the Wind is a feature length documentary about young children from the island of Bonaire who journey from humble beginnings to international fame in the sport of windsurfing, transforming not only their island but the face of the sport worldwide.
Over 40 countries compete in professional freestyle windsurfing, yet one tiny Caribbean island dominates - Bonaire. How could an island of 13,000 people with almost no tax base and no formal training facilities produce world class athletes? Set against the backdrop of the 2011 professional competition on Bonaire, Children of the Wind uncovers this question, depicting the fifteen year struggle of brothers Taty and Tonky and their cousin Kiri, who journey from poor fishing families to the cover of windsurfing magazines.
When the Bonaire kids first broke onto the scene at the 2001 North American Championship in Florida, they blew everyone away, taking home twenty trophies.
This was an unprecedented achievement by any country in the history of windsurfing, never mind a tiny Caribbean island. What many didn’t realize, however, were the humble backgrounds from which these children came, particularly brothers Tonky and Taty Frans who never knew their father and left a drug infested home at ages 6 and 7 with their cousin Kiri to live with their grandparents and learned to sail on old broken equipment.
The Frans brothers and Kiri are now among the top five windsurfers in the world. Their local leadership has set off a movement amongst the youth on Bonaire. Now with the return of the professional world tour to the island, the boys finally have their chance to show their island the remarkable level they have reached as professional athletes. This is more than a windsurfing story, it’s a human story of young children overcoming the limits of their circumstance through sport.
