Babies
Autumn 2010 Documentary
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 7pm
Acadia Cinema's Al Whittle Theatre
450 Main Street, Wolfville, NS
Directed by Thomas Balmes
Starring Ponijao, Bayarjargal, Mari, and Hattie
Rated G · 79 minutes
France
English, Japanese, Mongolian with subtitles
Babies (Bébé(s) )
Directed by award-winning filmmaker Thomas Balmès, from an original idea by producer Alain Chabat, Babies simultaneously follows four babies around the world – from birth to first steps. The children are, respectively, in order of on-screen introduction: Ponijao, who lives with her family near Opuwo, Namibia; Bayarjargal, who resides with his family in Mongolia, near Bayanchandmani; Mari, who lives with her family in Tokyo, Japan; and Hattie, who resides with her family in the United States, in San Francisco.
Re-defining the nonfiction art form, Babies joyfully captures on film the earliest stages of the journey of humanity that are at once unique and universal to us all.
Babies is a mesmerizing and weirdly manipulative experience, combining wide-eyed innocence and shrewd cultural commentary as it chronicles the folkways and familial rites of four starkly different societies. A. Hornaday The Washington Post