Little Sundance. Moviegoers between the ages of 2-13 are "without a life raft," and that's why Nicole Dreiske is curator of BAMkids, an independent film festival of "more than 50 works from 20 countries" -- all intended for kids, reports Laurel Graeber in The New York Times. Among the films to be shown at BAMKids is The Beetleboy, an animated short from Germany in which a young boy wakes up to find he's been turned into a beetle, but "no one notices." Nicole says it's "literally Kafka for kids." Also to be featured is a Claymation flick called Red Planet Blues, which is "about a little Martian who would like to repay all those NASA visits." Then there's a rare film authored by Shel Silverstein called Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back.

No, you won't find any Disney or Pixar at BAMkids -- or at the New York International Children's Film Festival, a similar event featuring "52 competing works selected from more than 1,800 entries." The latter is a three-weekend affair that's expected to attract more than 20,000 attendees, including a healthy contingent in "sneakers and braces." That audience will be treated to films such as Millions, the tale of two "motherless brothers who are 9 and 7," which "examines how the boys' lives change after one discovers a suitcase of cash." It's the work of Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame and actually was not intended for a kid audience. But as Danny explains: "It's very much told from the kids' perspective ... and that's why it deserves to be in this festival." Another film, called Steamboy, is an animated flick, a "story of fantastic, steam-powered inventions," featuring the voices of Anna Paquin and Alfred Molina.

Steamboy was created by Katsuhiro Otomo, who is best known for his manga work. He comments: "If the audience can enjoy the movie as a 'bottomless toy box,' that will be wonderful." Eric Beckman, "founder and co-director of the New York festival" says the idea is to take some chances: "The Incredibles is an amazing movie," he says, "but it's rare that a studio can take risks.'" While those risks don't include sax and violence they "do not avoid disturbing themes." In fact, Eric Beckman says there was "one four-year-old who asked her mother to write on an audience ballot that she liked a film because it was sad." Parents, however, invariably prefer the "sweet" films, he says. BAMkids, bam.org, hits Brooklyn March 12-13, while the New York festival, gkids.com, starts this Friday and runs through March 20th.

Tim Manners, editor