Already awarded second place in the eighth edition of the competition, Alessia Mannini has undoubtedly confirmed the qualities that impressed the jury last year, presenting a personal and incisive project characterized by great rhythm, enchanted atmospheres, and unique directorial solutions. Perfectly aligning with the text's tone, her playful and dreamy interpretation highlighted the narrative's intrinsic irony and brought out its meditative delicacy. She consciously alternated crowded panels with more paused and poetic ones, yet made them cohesive through a shared material treatment, intense colors, skillful gestures, and an instinctive stroke. The freshest and most immediate storyboard panels are particularly successful: the philosopher giant with the Lilliputian climbing on his shoulder; the village on the rock animated by the diligent quartet of friends; the beached colossus surrounded by tiny beings; the poetic landscape forming the backdrop for the recruitment of the inhabitants.

Ivana Flekštajn's pictorial skill and narrative power were striking, but it was above all the exaggerated and paradoxical contrast between the enormous giant and the microscopic inhabitants that convinced the jury. The playful and competent skill with which this dimensional disparity was handled is also based on the vast areas courageously left uncolored, such as in the splendid curtain opened on the bare wall. Although the dark and unsettling atmospheres place these images in a higher age bracket than suggested by the text, the mastery of perspectives, anatomical confidence, and competent command of traditional techniques are undoubtedly remarkable.