From early animation to foreign-language gems via all-time classics, a range of movies to whet budding cinematic appetites What is a children’s film? Is it a film aimed specifically at younger viewers, tailor-made to cater to their growing needs? Maybe it’s a film about childhood, a coming-of-age story that resonates with a wide range of viewers, young and old alike. Or perhaps it’s simply any film that a child could watch, anything that isn’t restricted by its nature to adult-only audiences. When I was a kid in the late 60s and early 70s, there were two movie classifications that excluded younger viewers: the AA category , introduced in 1970, for which you had to be at least 14 years old; and X-certificate movies , which were restricted to over-16s or (after 1970) over-18s. Films that fell under these prohibitive categories included everything from the David Essex/Ringo Starr Brit-pop romp That’ll Be the Day to the violent Sam Peckinpah shocker Straw Dogs via such innocuous fare as Blazing Saddles , American