Planet Kids

Oscar-nominated, tender adaptation of an acclaimed short story about a young girl who discovers a secret that will change her life. Impressive directorial debut from Ireland, which eschews the conventions of a coming-of-age film, and synchronizes the heart of the story with the pulse of the viewer. — Due to her mother’s pregnancy, Cáit, the young daughter of a large, poor family - a truly quiet girl, will spend the summer with distant relatives. Thanks to their care, she will slowly find her voice in the idyllic setting of the Irish countryside. But while there are supposed to be no secrets among the members of her new family, she will discover one. — Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2023 Nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay | BAFTA | 2023 Official Selection | Berlin Film Festival | 2022

Truffaut was still a boy when his own father handed him over to the police, and years later that memory became a film. Jean-Pierre Léaud, cast in the lead, never memorised his lines but spoke in his own words. Blow after blow, you feel how cruel childhood can be. — Antoine Doinel makes his first appearance as an unruly boy growing up in a cramped Paris flat with a family that doesn’t understand him. He skips school, steals and suffers under a teacher who has it in for him, until an arrest lands him in a cell overnight with prostitutes and thieves. The court sends him to a reform school, but Antoine escapes, in search of freedom. — Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 1959 Best Director | Cannes Film Festival | 1959 OCIC Award | Cannes Film Festival | 1959

What's the flip side of the Disney dream? Next to the dreamy Florida Disneyworld, children build their own dominions and struggle to survive. Little chunks of life, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, in a colorful paradigm of contemporary neorealist cinema. — This is the story of a wild 6-year-old and her fearless friends. Their summer is full of wonders, bewilderment and exciting adventures, while the adults around them have to face a harsh reality. — Nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Willem Dafoe) | Oscars | 2018

Every one of its seventy-two minutes is seen through a child’s eyes, because Laura Wandel wanted to remind us how it feels to be small in a world that is big and strange. She cast Maya Vanderbeque at seven, and the two of them spent three months playing before the cameras ever rolled. — Seven-year-old Nora starts at a new school where her older brother, Abel, has been a pupil for years, and at break on that first day she sees a group of boys shoving him around the playground. She runs to help, but Abel makes her promise to tell no one. Now Nora has to decide whose side she’s on, and she has until the bell rings. — FIPRESCI Prize - Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2021 Special Award for the Promotion of Gender Equality | Sarajevo Film Festival | 2021

In his second feature film, Alexandros Voulgaris tenderly charts the emotional quests of an entire generation at the beginning of a new millennium, but above all he introduces us to a dog called Roz (meaning Pink). — Vassilis is a loner, he writes music and reminisces about Emily, a girl from Ireland whom he fell in love with on a New Year's Eve in Berlin. During the filming of a documentary about immigrant musicians in Greece, he meets 11-year-old Snezana from Ukraine. A special relationship develops between them, one that helps each of them free themselves from their own ghosts. — Official Selection | Toronto Film Festival | 2007 Official Selection | Karlovy Vary Film Festival | 2007 Official Selection - International Competition | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2006

The Dardenne brothers, masters of realism, won the Grand Prix at Cannes with their most moving film, about a lonely boy who has to learn to trust other people and himself. They had never used music in their films before, but this time they reach for Beethoven. — Twelve-year-old Cyril lives in a children’s home in Belgium, and his father has vanished without a trace, selling the boy’s bike on his way out. Cyril refuses to accept it and runs away, until Samantha, a hairdresser he barely knows, agrees to have him to stay at weekends. She also buys his bike back. — Grand Prize of the Jury | Cannes Film Festival | 2011

The conception of Charlot's character, the adult with the golden heart and the mischief of a child, two entities that complement each other naturally causing laughter and tears in alternation. — Charlot picks up a baby off the street and decides to raise it. Five years later, the two of them work together, as the kid breaks windows and Charlot fixes them for money. At the same time, the mother of the child, who became a famous singer, tries to find her kid.

Role-playing games and amateur children gangs in Gothenburg, in a cold but impressive observation of violent human behavior, which emerged from the director's extensive research into real incidents of organized bullying and his personal interviews with victims and perpetrators. — In central Gothenburg, Sweden, a group of 12 to 14 year old boys committed about 40 robberies against other children between 2006 and 2008. The robbers used an elaborate plan called the "little brother trick", which involved advanced role-playing and gang rhetoric instead of physical violence. — Official Selection DIrector's Fortnight | Cannes Film Festival | 2011

An Oscar triumph that will be remembered as one of the most eventful wins in history. A black boy grows up and discovers his sexuality through three decisive stages of his life. Academy Awards for Best Picture and Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali and a watershed moment for American indie cinema. — A timeless story of human connection and reconciliation with oneself, "Moonlight" tells the story of a man's life, beginning in childhood and through adulthood, as he struggles to find his place in the world. A vital portrait of the life of a contemporary African American man and a poetic reflection on identity, family, friendship and love, full of deep compassion and universal truths. — Best Film | Oscars | 2017 Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Mahershala Ali) | Oscars | 2017 Best Adapted Screenplay | Oscars | 2017

The great revelation of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival came from Belgium with a wonderful and tender debut that had no traces of didacticism and trailed the internal physical conflict that determines the coming of age of a young child. — 15-year-old Lara is determined to become a professional ballerina. With the support of her father, she is thrown into the ultimate battle. Her indignation and impatience grow as she realizes that her body does not meet the requirements of classical dance, because she was born a boy. — Golden Camera | Cannes Film Festival | 2018 Queer Palm | Cannes Film Festival | 2018 Un Certain Regard Award for Best Actor (Victor Polster) | Cannes Film Festival | 2018 Audience Award | San Sebastián International Film Festival | 2018 International Competition | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2018 Nominated for Best Motion Picture | Foreign Language | Golden Globes | 2019

The great Andrey Zvyagintsev stages the disappearance of a young boy and gradually and masterfully orchestrates a cinematic requiem about the dissolution of family ties, the absence of love and the deathly apathy of a slowly dying Russia. — A couple splits up and their divorce is full of disappointment, bitterness and insults. Having already found new partners, the ex-spouses cannot wait to turn the page and start their new lives. Even if that means abandoning their 12-year-old son. — Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2018 Jury Prize | Cannes Film Festival | 2017 Best Foreign Film | César Awards | 2018 Best Film | London Film Festival | 2017

It took the Palme d’Or at Cannes, even as its director was accused back home in Japan of bringing shame on his country. A family who shoplift to survive take in a child who isn’t theirs, and ending up with them is the best thing that has ever happened to her. — Fresh from another petty theft, a man and his son find a little girl out in the freezing cold, clearly chilled to the bone. His wife isn’t keen at first, but she ends up agreeing to take the girl in and look after her. Money is short and they scrape by from day to day, yet theirs is a happy home, until the day something goes wrong. — Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2019 Palme d'Or | Cannes Film Festival | 2018

Athens, summer of 2004: the end of our collective national innocence. The fairy tales, the costumes, the sets and the exalted 2004 pop culture moment perfectly fuse into one, in this striking, tender story of 11-year-old Misha. Iris Award for the Best Greek Film of 2018. — In August 2004, an 11-year-old boy from Russia arrives in Greece to live with his mother; they’ve been apart for a long time. He doesn't know that a new father is also waiting for him in Athens. While Greece is living the Olympic dream, the young boy, removed from his natural surroundings, dweller of an unknown country and a violently changing world, will be abruptly cast into the world of adults. The dark side of his beloved fairy tales will serve as his conduit. — Best International Film | Tribeca Film Festival | 2017 C.I.C.A.E. Award | Sarajevo Film Festival | 2017 Best Film | Hellenic Film Academy Awards | 2018

The 2004 Olympic Games ended on time, but what they left behind is still languishing slowly. Sofia Exarchou’s directorial debut portays a suitable and weird portrait of a lost generation who learned to regard the term "crisis" as something normal. — Ten years after the 2004 Olympic Games, a group of boys live among the abandoned sports facilities of the Olympic Village in Athens. The boys stroll among the ruins, setting up games and organizing dog matings to make money. Dimitris and Anna try to escape from the Village and direct themselves towards the tourist hotels of the southern suburbs. As their adventures continue and the two children enter the tourists’ lives, Dimitris’ desire for acceptance will be tested in a violent way. — Best Debutant Actor (Dimitra Vlagopoulou) | Athens International Film Festival | 2017 Best Debutant Director | Athens International Film Festival | 2017 New Directors Award | San Sebastián International Film Festival | 2016 Best Actress (Dimitra Vlagopoulou) | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2016 Official Selection | Warsaw International Film Festival | 2016 Best First Time Director | Hellenic Film Academy Awards | 2017 Best Sound | Hellenic Film Academy Awards | 2017

Céline Sciamma, director of “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”, wrote this Oscar-nominated animation for children and adults alike. It follows a boy who ends up in a children’s home after his mother dies, and it’s an unusually tender story about friendship and growing up. — Courgette is a strange nickname for a nine-year-old boy, but it’s what his mother called him. After a tragic loss he lands in a children’s home, where it’s hard to fit in among strangers who aren’t always kind. With the help of a policeman and his new friends, though, he learns to trust, and discovers that family sometimes turns up where you’d least expect it. — Nominated for Best Animated Feature | Oscars | 2017 Best Adapted Screenplay | César Awards | 2017 Best Animated Film | César Awards | 2017 Audience Award European Film | San Sebastián Film Festival | 2016

Fatih Akin pays tribute to teenage nerve with this tale of two boys who steal a car and set off on a mad trip across Germany, with no map and nowhere to be. It’s a moving story of a friendship that saves a life, and of a summer that turns out to be the best ever precisely because nobody planned it. — A fourteen-year-old boy is spending the summer alone in the family villa, since his mother is in rehab and his father is away on a supposed business trip with his secretary. When another boy drifts into his life, they’re soon friends, and before long they’ve stolen a car and taken off. Where they’re going hardly matters, as long as it’s away from Berlin.

When a final-year class in East Germany held a two-minute silence for those killed in the Hungarian uprising, the education minister came to the school himself to demand the ringleader’s name, and not one of them gave it up. The story is true, and one of the boys in that classroom wrote it down. — The news that people are dying in Hungary reaches a final-year class in Stalinstadt, East Germany, in 1956, and the students decide to mark it with two minutes’ silence in the middle of a lesson. To them it’s an act of mourning. The authorities see counter-revolution, and a minister is sent from Berlin to find out whose idea it was. — Audience Award | Berkshire International Film Festival | 2019

Can a film about education move you to tears? Of course it can, as is evidenced in this award-winning documentary about a school year, that was beloved by audiences in France and is sure to speak to the hearts of all. The young students in the class steal the show. — In rural France, schoolteacher Georges Lopez educates 12 children, whose ages range from 4 to 11 years old. Over the course of a year, the soon-to-retire Lopez instructs them all in one small classroom with the traditional tools of French teaching: rote repetition and the dictation of literary passages for copying. As the seasons pass, Lopez must keep his students disciplined while preparing the older children for the exams that will determine their educational future. — Best Editing | César Awards | 2003 Nominated for Best Film not in the English Language | BAFTA Awards | 2004 Best Documentary Award | Valladolid International Film Festival | 2002