Head Full of Questions
1989 · 19m · Canada
Directed by Moira Simpson
Genres: animation, documentary, family
Animated pair Fred and Anna help introduce pre-adolescents to attraction, reproduction, pregnancy and birth, with brief discussion of AIDS and contraception.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a sex-ed cartoon from 1989—the premise screams earnest institutional messaging—but Simpson somehow makes the contraband work by letting the whimsy genuinely undercut the didacticism instead of collapsing into it.
A formally assured educational film that knows its place in the lineage of public health animation, executing the delicate balance between accessibility and honesty with the kind of measured craft that separates a film worth preserving from a forgotten PSA.
The decision to animate rather than live-action—to let Fred and Anna's deliberately simple forms carry the weight of awkwardness—transforms what could've been clinical into something that actually lets kids breathe with the material.