05/14/2025
Join the 21st San Diego International Children’s Film Festival this summer for screenings of the family comedy feature “Magnetosphere,” written and directed by longtime festival collaborator Nicola Rose, writer-director of the award-winning streaming hit “Goodbye, Petrushka.”
The first screening, July 27 at Comic-Con International: San Diego with Nicola Rose in attendance, time tbd, is for those attending Comic-Con. Followed by a second screening - free admission for all - Aug. 16 in the beautiful theater at the San Diego Central Library downtown. Time announced soon.
In “Magnetosphere,” it’s 1997. The Hale-Bopp comet is passing by Earth, and Maggie Campion is a kid with a secret. She’s always known there’s something different about her: she can see sounds and hear colors, and her senses do all sorts of other unusual things besides. Shy and cautious, Maggie has always kept these things to herself.
But when she moves across the country with her family — goofy theatrical dad Russell, pragmatic mom Helen, and mischievous little sister Evie — Maggie’s world is shaken. Everything changes when she starts school and her dad mounts a ramshackle production of “The Pirates of Penzance” at the local theatre.
Maggie meets several important people: her first love, her first best friend, a teacher who recognizes Maggie’s differences, and the family’s loony handyman-exterminator, Gil, who nurses a formidable hidden talent.
Together, these oddball folks will lead Maggie to the realization that her differences have a name — synesthesia. And that with or without it, she’s remarkable.
Starring Shayelin Martin (Wild Goat Surf) YouTube star Steven He (Emotional Damage) and Colin Mochrie (Whose Line Is It Anyway?)
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