Documentation to database European Children’s Films 2004 – 2017 (19.Nov 2019)

Sources
The films themselves were researched for Kids Regio. Research drew as a basis from ECFA’s extensive annual list
of films for children and young people. In addition to this list, the research checked what films were represented at
various European children’s film festivals such as in Zlín – International Festival for Children and Youth, the Giffoni
Film Festival, Cinekid Amsterdam, or Schlingel Chemnitz. The production reports of the members of the European
Film Promotion (EFP) network were systematically searched for children’s films. There is a great diversity
of sources for follow-up research on the films, including the websites of the films themselves, of distributors,
national film institutes, IMDb, Wikipedia and many more.  

Definition of Children’s Film
 Children’s films are here defined as films with child protagonists for children and families.
They are suitable for children and have been shown in cinemas.
To be included in the dataset, the film had to meet all of the following conditions in terms of described content and
freely accessible audiovisual artefacts (e.g. trailers):

BY FORM, a children’s film is a coherent cinematic or cinematically narrative audiovisual
product for primary theatrical circulation, meaning that it has been shown in a cinema at
least once. This also includes films that, although they have no theatrical distributor, have
been shown at festivals (Czech fairytale features, for instance). Admission figures for these
films were not identified as the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO) does not capture
them. The children’s films included in this study have a running time of not less than 60 minutes
and are mainly fiction. Their age recommendation was no higher than 12 year in, and they
were produced or co-produced by, at least one European country.

BY REFERENCE, a children’s film predominantly targets children or families with children.

BY CONTENT, there is at least one pre-adolescent protagonist. An exception is fairytale feature
films where the lead roles are played by young adults – here, the name of the genre has
to speak for itself. Anthropomorphic characters or adults who behave like children are also
possible. Children’s films can be live action films or animations.

EUROPE
The dataset contains with the exception of Morocco data from all 41 members of the European Audiovisual Observatory.  

International Title
English Title with article first, confirmed by world sales

Countries of Production
All countries with financial share in the production. Including minor and major co-productions. Two letter codes following ISO 3166-1 alpha 2, if at least one European country is mentioned.  

Year of Production
Mainly the year of first festival release or end of production, not the cinematic release.

Date of First Release
Date of World Premiere

Age recommendation
Mainly following ECFA-recommendation or other recommendations like festivals or worldsales.