Each week FILMCLUB’s experts in film pick a selection of their favourite cinema releases for young kids to teens, under the age of 18.
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A Small Act
Cert: 12A
Age Rating: 11+
Duration: 88 minutes
Year Produced: 2010
Director: Jennifer Arnold
A Small Act tells the story of Chris Mburu, a Kenyan man who works for the United Nations as a human rights lawyer. As an impoverished student, Chris was sponsored by a Swedish woman, a stranger called Hilde Back, whose donations helped him to continue studying and eventually graduate from top American university, Harvard. Now an adult with a successful career, Chris decides to track down Hilde and follow in her footsteps by helping out young Kenyans who can’t afford to pay their school fees. This touching and powerful documentary the film shows how what seems like a little gesture to one person, can mean the world to someone else.
Watch Inderpreet’s interview with Chris Mburu and the film’s director.
Related films: Sisters In Law, Africa United, Abouna, Amelie, It’s A Wonderful Life
Red Riding Hood
Cert: 12A
Age Rating: 14+
Duration: 100 mins
Year Produced: 2011
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Billy Burke, Virginia Madsen, Shiloh Fernandez, Julie Christie, Lukas Haas
You might already be familiar with the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale but the 2011 re-vamping of this classic nursery story has little in common with the original, save for a scarlet hood and a big, bad wolf. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke – who was also behind the phenomenally successful and equally dark Twilight movie – Red Riding Hood focuses on Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), who lives in a small village plagued by werewolf attacks. When the werewolf kills Valerie’s sister, the people of the town seek revenge but end up just killing a normal wolf. Cue the entrance of werewolf hunter Father Soloman (Gary Oldman), who agrees to help the townspeople catch the real culprit, who, creepily, could be one of them…
Watch Rebecca’s interviews with the director and cast.
Related Films: Sleepy Hollow, The Wolf Man, Donnie Darko, La Belle Et La Bete, The Red Shoes
Winnie The Pooh
Cert: U
Rating: 5+
Duration: 69 mins
Year Produced: 2010
Director: Stephen J. Anderson, Don Hall
Cast: Jim Cummings, Craig Ferguson, John Cleese, Tom Kenny
Ignoring the current obsession with flashy CGI effects, this gentle, whimsical animated Walt Disney feature uses the old-school, hand-drawn style of the classic A. A. Milne children’s books it’s based on. It brings to life three previously unadapted tales revolving around the much-loved character Pooh, the philosophical bear “of very little brain” but much heart and his adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood with his animal friends. These involve a mission to find a replacement for Eeyore’s lost tail, and a quest to track down a monster called the “Backson” they believe to have kidnapped Christopher Robin.
Related Films:
Peter and the Wolf, The Cat Returns, Doctor Seuss – The Cat in the Hat (1971 animated), FernGully – The Last Rainforest, Ratatouille