This is what happens when you let kids write a movie

For her directorial debut Cave Small Cave Big, Joële Walinga decided to partner with two unknown Toronto screenwriters, Madeline Harker and Adelaide Schwartz. The duo are long-time friends, and their tastes veer towards throwback Hollywood sci-fi. (Harker's favourite movie is Star Trek; Schwartz's is Splash).

They're also, please note, little kids.

When they wrote the film, they were five. Now seven, they plan to attend the movie's world premiere at the AGO February 16 — and as they tell CBC Arts, they're thrilled with how Walinga brought their story to life.

Says Schwartz: "She followed the script exactly."

The story, by the way, is like nothing you could imagine but also exactly what you'd expect.

It's about a Butterfly Girl (Hannan Younis) who visits a cave, and then makes a cave — only to have said cave snatched by a mad scientist (William Ellis) who transforms it into a bigger cave.

We'll stop there in the interest of avoiding spoilers, confusion, further use of the word "cave," etc. Because while that mini summary might leave you with a few questions, the biggest one is probably this: why did Walinga make a movie written by kids in the first place?

The director, who is 28, says she's pursued projects involving collaborators from outside the art world for a few years now. "I'm interested in bridging this gap between the viewer and the art-maker because I feel there's this huge disparity between who feels like they're even able to come into a gallery and experience art," she tells CBC Arts.

I hope when other kids see the film — or even adults — they feel empowered to trust themselves.- Joële Walinga, director of

Cave Small Cave Big is just the first in a series of kid-written movies that she has on the go, and should she secure the funding, there are plans to make 12 in total. In March, when the short screens at Halifax's Khyber Centre for the Arts, she'll create a new screenplay with local children, and she'll do the same in Brooklyn this April. A horror movie written by six-year-old Julian Adamska, Nightmare Here, is already in the works.

"It's actually quite scary," she says of that flick, and you can see his hand-drawn storyboards online for the zombie-infested proof. "It's scarier than I felt comfortable with when he was writing it, but I was like, 'You can't say no!'"

That's because, she explains, the whole project hinges on one main idea: encouragement. "What does encouragement look like?"

"It's just telling kids, 'You have full reign to do whatever you want.' You make whatever film is important to you, what you would like to see in the theatre, and I don't say no to any of their ideas, no matter how violent or whatever they are," she says.

"It's to tell them to trust in the value of their ideas and see what effect that might have, both on them and the viewer."

Walinga is a friend of Harker's parents, which is how she met the girls, and over three days — where they'd watch movies and talk about storytelling and draw and (this was one of Schwartz's favourite bits) take breaks for park trips and snacks — the kids came up with the script.

They couldn't write yet, so they'd shout out the plot points while Walinga scribbled everything down. From there, she came back to them with a storyboard grid and asked them to draw pictures of the scenes they'd described.

"I told them that they were going to be writing whatever movie they wanted," Walinga says. "But it seemed like during the workshop they never got it."

"I think that's really because at that age they really can't [...] think about actually making a film, and that's part of the reason this [project] is interesting to me."

"I like the idea that they can't imagine making films. It doesn't seem like something that people make — it seems like something that just exists. To be able to tell them, 'No, culture is made. You can participate in this.'"

The film production got some crowdfunding support via Indiegogo, where it was successfully backed last summer, and its creative team includes Daniel Warth (editor) and Chet Tilokani (director of photography), whose comedy Dim the Fluorescents won the grand jury prize at Slamdance just last week.

"I think the script is such a masterpiece," says Walinga. "I didn't realize it until after the edit, when I actually saw it. Every character — everyone's dealing with a different situation of whether or not they can keep something." For the AGO crowd, it's a thought-provoking exploration of the "transience of ownership," per Walinga. It's also a pretty universal theme for the average five-year-old — who's got a better lock on "sharing" than, say, their two-year-old kid sister, but is still puzzling out why they've got to let them paw around in their Legos in the first place.

Harker and Schwartz are still working on stories — though Schwartz notes she prefers to draw hers ("like comics") — and both girls were happy with the finished film.

"I don't know if the effect will be right now as much as in the future, but I hope that they feel a great respect for the value of their own ideas," says Walinga. "And I hope other kids can see it too."

"I hope when other kids see the film — or even adults — they feel empowered to trust themselves."

Cave Small Cave Big. Written by Madeline Harker and Adelaide Schwartz. Directed by Joële Walinga. 11 min. Feb. 16 and 20 at the Art Gallery of Ontario. www.ago.net