Fighting Demons with Dragons

Three pupils on the precipice between childhood and adulthood are studying at Østerskov Boarding School, one of the most unique schools in the world; here, classes are conducted through role-playing games, and the pupils are taught to come to terms with the trauma and their fluid selves through masquerades and metamorphosis. For two school years, the film follows the pupils and their highly emotional adventure through puberty, self-discovery, and maturity, illuminating with a sharp, intimate, humorous as well as poignant gaze, the chaos, the anguish, and the inexpressible joy of the first years of one’s youth. Fighting Demons with Dragons is an homage to uniqueness and the off-kilter situation in which we all find ourselves, while the pupils’ insightful commentary on notions such as normalcy and mental illness are formulated with disarming simplicity and striking in their aptness, in a film that speaks to everyone who has ever felt odd at some point or another in their lives – in other words, to everyone.