Introduce the children to "The Green-haired Boy", a film accessible from the age of 10, which describes the impact of difference on a child and the way they are looked at. All with rare emotion and sensitivity.
Recommended from 10 years
* Once upon a time : Police find Peter, a ten-year-old boy, and present him to a psychologist who tells him his story. Orphaned, Peter is greeted by Gramp, an aging actor, who will teach him humanist values. But Peter wakes up one morning with green hair and therefore reads intolerance and fear in the eyes of others.
* What they will love: The strangeness of the appearance of the child's green hair (Dean Stockwell, future Al of Code Quantum) is enough to amuse young spectators and understand why they suddenly changed color will be enough to keep them going. It is this spring that allows the director Joseph Losey to convey a message of tolerance proposed on the Peter scale but wanting to be universal. The camera is also always with the boy, at his level, sometimes even so that we do not see who is speaking but that we simply hear him. The children will immediately feel included in this story and in connection with its main character.
RKO
The gaze of a child who listens to the grown-ups (behind him) talking about the war / Losey's camera remains on Peter's lost gaze
* What can worry them: The film addresses the grief of parents and the fact that war leads to the death of innocent people and sometimes leaves children orphaned. The subject is attenuated by much lighter moments (the Gramp song, for example), but is an integral part of the Boy with green hair and can disturb young people. In addition, the sub-text on the arrival of the Cold War with its paranoia towards the political orientations of the Americans as well as on the context of the post-World War II period make this film try to speak to children as to adults. Parents may need to pause to answer their questions.
* What they will keep deep inside: First the message of the film, anti-war and pacifist. They will also remember that difference should not isolate but unite and that it should not frighten, because the outside world is already difficult without adding more drama that could be avoided. Discrimination, intolerance and the gaze of others have no place in the life of a child as an adult. The Boy with Green Hair is a humanist film, the rare blunders visible by parents (a mixture of genres sometimes a little confusing) will pass like a letter in the post with children.
To get an idea of the film, here is its trailer: