With Grandma
1999 · 9m · Canada
Directed by Françoise Hartmann
Genres: coming-of-age, family, silent
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
In this wordless film, young Madeleine, left with her grandmother for the first time, is coaxed out of her tears by a house full of surprises, a chest of dress-up costumes, baking and play, discovering that Grandma knows exactly how to have fun.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's the kind of gentle, wordless domestic film that gets mistaken for timeless—which is exactly why it's boring. Grandma unlocks a toy chest and the kid stops crying; there's no subversion here, just a Hallmark card pretending to be cinema.
Hartmann's restraint in the wordless register sits honestly within a lineage of silent children's cinema, and the film's architecture—moving from tears to costume play to shared creation—demonstrates a curator's understanding of emotional pacing and earned moments.
The genius move is the complete absence of dialogue: every beat of trust between Madeleine and her grandmother has to be earned through a *look*, a gesture, the specific rhythm of how Grandma presents each surprise, and that discipline forces the performance and editing into something that feels lived rather than performed.