When politicians or TV suits are at a loss for something to say or want some heartstrings to pluck, they often remark that something or other is being done “for the children”.

On the face of it, the Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth is clearly for the children, but in this case there’s no condescension involved. Instead, tales from a smattering of nations, representing a variety of human complexities, will be found at the 10th-anniversary version of the event, which runs February 22 to 29, mostly at the Vancity Theatre.

Setting the tone for the 2008 R2R is a pair of films about things that are most certainly not good for children. Actually, turning trauma into triumph is the theme of Friday’s (February 22) fest opener, Red Like the Sky, from Italy, and Sweden’s Leaps and Bounds, screening Sunday (February 24).

Red is based on the true story of a youngster who in 1971 accidentally blinds himself. He ends up in a school for the blind where imagination is literally beaten out of the boys by nuns and an authoritarian headmaster. Our harried hero resists, however, and turns his love of special effects and storytelling into a skill that would eventually make him one of Italy’s top sound editors.

Leaps and Bounds (which sports the delightful Swedish title Hoppet) deals with two Kurdish brothers who, after surviving an aerial bombardment in northern Iraq, end up adrift in Sweden and separated from their loving parents. The film’s mix of professionals (including Fargo’s Peter Stormare as an impish hot-dog salesman) and immigrant amateurs results in a powerfully naturalistic yet stylish study of culture clashes and competitive high jump (undermined only by an inexplicably Disneyfied ending).

“This year, the films are tending towards younger audiences,” says Venay Felton, the fest’s founder and executive director. “Several are about sports and are more easily referenced by kids here.”

Even so, the movies are still tougher than our corn-fed kids may be used to.

“They are certainly franker than what we’re used to in North America,” Felton says. “In Europe, they tend to be more honest and don’t trivialize important things as much as we do.”

Other notable titles include Canada’s pleasing Breakfast With Scot, about a kid who comes off as too gay even for his adoptive same-sex parents, and Paula’s Secret, a German film about a girl lost in her own fantasies. Both screen the same day as the Swedish effort.

On Saturday (February 23), veteran children’s entertainer Rick Scott presents another Scandinavian kid flick, The Pelicanman. There’s also a morning of shorts, including the Oscar-nominated “I Met the Walrus”, next Friday (February 29). In between, there are numerous workshops on animation, documentary filmmaking, digital production, and sound editing, mostly at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre. (Check out r2rfestival.org/ for the schedule.)

Throughout the year, the fest offers numerous film-literacy outreach programs. But Felton says that mass access to digital equipment has changed the game.

“The workshops for high-school students are really master classes now, and we’ve sold out the entire program. But there is still some room in the grade-school classes.”

Yes, there are still some workshops left—for the children.