Six sliders. No stars.
Nothing on this site is recommended because people liked it. Films are described by what they are (how heavy, how fast, how far from the real world), and you get the ones closest to what you asked for.
Neither of these is the better film. They are just at opposite ends.
67 films tagged childhood, showing 50
Move a slider to sort by what films are like.
2017 · Family
A boy with a facial difference starts school for the first time at ten, and the film hands the story around to the people near him. Warm and openly designed to move you.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Horror
An eight-year-old girl whose parents have vanished hires the hit man across the hall to kill the monster under her bed. He does not believe in the monster, and goes along with her anyway.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
In the last weeks of the war, a twelve-year-old on a German island scavenges and barters to feed his family, and to find his mother the white bread and honey she craves. Quiet, small, told at his height.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A child is admitted to hospital with malnutrition on a court order, and his mother will not leave his side. It runs barely over seventy minutes and holds close to the two of them.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
An eight-year-old girl watches her Hungarian family settle on Vancouver Island in the late 1990s, while her oldest brother's behaviour turns dangerous. It stays down at the girl's level throughout.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
Two debt collectors are landed with a young girl who has been handed over as collateral against her mother's debts, and have to look after her. A drama built around that arrangement.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
After her father dies, a ten-year-old girl and her mother are left with almost nothing, and she takes refuge in the theatre. Short, at 82 minutes, and told from the girl's side.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Documentary
Four young people in Gaza film their daily life during the war: a boy in a tent, a girl making a cooking show, a boy helping paramedics, a woman with a newborn. An hour, spent close to them.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
In Taiwan in 1988, a withdrawn girl living in an unhappy house is drawn out by a lively girl her own age. Slow and quiet, and mostly about what home is like.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
In Madrid in 1988, a girl preparing for her first communion starts asking questions about death, and befriends a gypsy girl who goes nowhere without her goat. A coming-of-age story told at child height.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
An Asháninka boy is taken from his village by Shining Path guerrillas and turned into one of their fighters. Peruvian, based on a true story, and told from the boy's side.
AI estimate, not yet described
2021 · Drama
A nine-year-old boy's street in 1969 Belfast turns overnight into a place with barricades, and his parents have to decide whether to stay. Black and white, shot at kid height, and mostly family talk.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Drama
Red Crescent volunteers take an emergency call from a little girl trapped in a car under fire in Gaza, and try to keep her talking while they get an ambulance to her. Almost all of it is one room and a phone line.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
Four generations of girls grow up on the same farm in northern Germany, in four different periods. The film cuts between them instead of telling them in order, and the same gestures and moments keep returning.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Thriller
A twelve-year-old arrives at a water polo summer camp and buys his way into the popular group by joining in on the boy they have decided is diseased. Tense, mean, and all inside the camp.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
In sanctions-era Iraq a nine-year-old is picked at school to bake the cake for Saddam Hussein's birthday, and flour and eggs are nowhere to be found. She sets off for the city with her grandmother to trade for them.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
Two young brothers talk their often-absent father into taking them along to Lagos for the day, on the day of Nigeria's 1993 election. Mostly walking, talking and small stops around the city.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
In a desert mining town in 1982 Chile, an eleven-year-old lives with her queer family as a deadly illness spreads, said to pass between two people the moment they fall in love. The town turns on them.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
Fuki is eleven, growing up in Tokyo at the end of the 1980s, with adolescence starting and her family under strain. The film stays with her childhood and the people in the house around her.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
In a Chinese village in 1991, a ten-year-old left with his grandmother watches a year of planting and harvest, weddings and funerals, as the young people leave for work in the cities. It moves at the speed of the farming year.
AI estimate, not yet described
2026 · Musical
Michael Jackson's life from the Jackson 5 rehearsing under their father in Gary, Indiana to the Bad tour twenty years later. It moves through the records and the tours, with the family arguments in between.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2018 · Drama
A twelve-year-old boy living rough in Beirut takes his parents to court for having him. Most of it follows him around the city day to day, shot hand-held with people who had not acted before.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Horror
An ice cream truck arrives in a seaside town and the children who eat from it start killing the adults, leaving three who did not eat to get away. Gory and fast, and it does not let up.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Horror
Children live inside a 1990s children's television show hosted by a giant orange unicorn, and when one of them stops playing along the host turns on them. Bright sets, and it gets nasty fast.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Thriller
Eight-year-old Josephine sees a violent assault in Golden Gate Park. The film follows the fear and paranoia it leaves her with.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Drama
A boy who arrived as a refugee falls in with a man and then a woman, and the three of them make for a city in a broken-down world where his odd gifts start to show. It runs over three hours.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Comedy
Olga lives alone and by strict routine in a huge Mexico City block of flats until money forces her to rent out a room, and her lodger has secretly brought his young son. It moves very slowly.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Drama
An eleven-year-old is sent from the city to live with his young aunt in the family's village, and takes a long time to settle. Almost nothing dramatic happens: school, chores, and the people around him slowly changing.
AI estimate, not yet described
2009 · Animation
A bored girl moves into an old house and finds a small door into a version of her home where her parents pay attention and everything is better. Stop-motion, made for children, and properly creepy.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2026 · Family
A man remembers the night in 1962 when, aged eight and mad about planes, he flew across America with his mother while she went to try acting in Hollywood. An hour long, and mostly on the plane.
AI estimate, not yet described
2015 · Animation
The feelings inside an eleven-year-old girl run her from a control room in her head, and two of them get lost the week her family moves across the country. Bright and fast, with a lot underneath.
AI estimate, not yet described
2017 · Horror
In a small Maine town where children keep going missing, a group of misfit kids works out that something lives under the streets and wears a clown's face. As much a summer-holiday adventure as a horror film, with the scares on a schedule.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2019 · Comedy
A ten-year-old in the Hitler Youth, whose imaginary friend is a clownish Adolf Hitler, finds out his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in the attic. Broad silly jokes sitting right next to the worst thing in the room.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2008 · Horror
A bullied twelve-year-old in a snowed-in Stockholm suburb makes friends with the girl who has moved in next door and only comes out at night. It is very quiet and very cold, and it takes its time.
AI estimate, not yet described
2015 · Drama
A five-year-old falls asleep on a train and wakes thousands of miles across India, and grows up adopted in Australia. The first half is a small boy alone in a huge country; the second is a man at a computer.
AI estimate, not yet described
2020 · Drama
A Korean family move to a patch of Arkansas farmland in the 1980s so the father can grow vegetables to sell, and the grandmother comes over to help. Gentle and slow, seen largely through the youngest boy.
AI estimate, not yet described
2006 · Fantasy
A girl moves with her pregnant mother to the forest post of her new stepfather, an army captain hunting rebels in 1944 Spain, and finds something living in an old maze. Fairy tale and war run side by side, and both turn violent.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2021 · Drama
An eight-year-old helps clear out her grandmother's house in the woods and meets another girl her age building a hut nearby. Just over an hour, very quiet, and almost entirely the two children.
AI estimate, not yet described
2008 · Animation
A goldfish with a human face escapes her father's underwater kingdom, washes up in a jar, and decides she wants to be a little girl and stay with the boy who found her. Made for small children, hand-drawn, and full of water.
AI estimate, not yet described
2015 · Drama
A woman and her five-year-old son live in a single locked room, which is the only world he has ever known. Told from the boy's side of it, in a small space with two people.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2006 · Adventure
A stuntman laid up in a 1920s Los Angeles hospital tells a wandering adventure story to a little girl with a broken arm, partly to get something from her. The story is shot in real places all over the world.
AI estimate, not yet described
2012 · Drama
A kindergarten teacher in a small Danish town is accused by one child of something he did not do, and the town makes up its mind fast. Plain, tense, and it keeps you a step ahead of everyone in it.
AI estimate, not yet described
2007 · Animation
Three linked stories about a boy and a girl who were close as children and keep being moved to different parts of Japan. Slow and quiet, and mostly about distance.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2012 · Drama
A six-year-old in a flooded Louisiana bayou community holds things together as her father gets sicker and the water rises. Told from her height, with her imagination left in it.
AI estimate, not yet described
1988 · Drama
A film director remembers the Sicilian village where he grew up in a projection booth, taught by the man who ran the cinema. Warm, long and openly sentimental.
AI estimate, not yet described
1982 · Science fiction
A boy in a California suburb finds something living in the shed and hides it in his bedroom from his mother and the government. Shot at child height throughout.
AI estimate, not yet described
1988 · Animation
A teenage boy and his little sister are left on their own in Japan in the last months of the war and try to live in an abandoned shelter. Animated, and it does not soften any of it.
AI estimate, not yet described
1990 · Family
A boy left behind when his family flies to Paris for Christmas defends the house against two burglars. The last half hour is traps.
AI estimate, not yet described
2011 · Family
An orphan living in the walls of a Paris railway station keeps the clocks running and tries to finish the automaton his father left him. Turns into a history of early cinema.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2024 · Animation
Two schoolgirls who draw manga start making it together, and keep going after school ends. Under an hour, and the drawing is the whole subject.
AI estimate, not yet described