Celia

In Australia in the 1950s, nine-year-old Celia is a lonely child. Her grandmother dies and she is the one who finds the body. A new family moves in next door; she becomes friends with their children, but her father forbids it because the neighbours are communists. In the same period the government starts a campaign against the rabbit plague and keeping rabbits as pets is banned. Celia's rabbit is taken away. Everything she cannot handle she carries into a fantasy world of her own, and that world has its own rules. Ann Turner's film does not present childhood as innocence. The narrative holds cold-war paranoia, authority in the home, and the matter of the rabbit on the same plane; to Celia they are the same thing, decisions taken without asking her. Rebecca Smart plays Celia. The final section changes the genre entirely. Who it's for: Viewers who like Australian cinema, films told from a child's point of view, and genre-blending narrative. Who it's not for: The final section is very harsh and this is not a children's film. The fantasy sequences are also frightening for some.