This Is Me
1979 · 27m · Canada
Directed by Ron Tunis
Genres: animation, documentary, family
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
Ten children aged six to eleven offer spontaneous answers to profound questions about God, the origins of life, death and the soul, with animation and camerawork illustrating their imaginative conclusions.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects kids-say-the-darndest-things to be saccharine, so Tunis nailing the uncanny honesty of how children actually theorize death and God feels almost subversive—but the animation sweetens it back down, which is honestly the coward's move.
A formally elegant film that knows exactly what it inherits from the essay tradition and the pedagogical documentary lineage; the restraint in letting children speak without ironic framing, paired with the illustrative animation, demonstrates considerable curatorial taste about what distance allows profundity.
The decision to animate each child's answer rather than just show reaction shots—that single structural choice transforms this from interview footage into something genuinely imaginative, letting their words become visible in a way that honors rather than condescends to their thinking.