I Am Eleven

The Michael Apted Up films, a long-running series of documentaries that check in with a group of ordinary British children from various backgrounds every seven years, have always positioned themselves as grand social experiments, taking their cue from the Ignatius Loyola quote, “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will give you the man.” There is no such pretense of experimentation or profundity from Genevieve Bailey's thoroughly ingratiating I Am Eleven, and no intention of glorifying “ordinary” 11-year-old behavior. Bailey interviews 11-year-old children from around the globe about their worldviews, seeing the age as the last rest stop between the innocent wonder of childhood and the hormonal catastrophe of adolescence. She finds some amazing kids, including volunteers at an elephant sanctuary in Thailand, and their personalities were enough to make me hope for future Up-esque check-ins down the line.