I really like Mark Cousins.  He talks about films in just the right way.  His voice is the voice of a man describing a precious jewel, a voice that betrays love and knowledge, a voice half lost in the dream of it all.  He skips from film to film as moments remind him of moments and from E.T. (1982) we are sudden four or five films and half a world away.  Or perhaps it’s because he presented BBC 2’s Moviedrome, the cult film series that was my first informal film school.

A Story of Children and Film is just that; an exploration of children in cinema and the common themes that Cousins finds there.  Like his The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011) I think your enjoyment will hinge on how much you like Cousins himself and how open you are to a true selection of world cinema but, as far as I’m concerned, it’s 106 minutes of joy and Cousins really understands that film is a medium of consecutive moments.

Highly recommended.